


Past the Size of Dreaming

by Johns_Farthings



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Magic, Misunderstandings, No permanent character death, Sort of adventure, and mutual pining, gratuitous Shakespeare references, people being too stubborn for their own good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 04:06:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 55,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14947259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johns_Farthings/pseuds/Johns_Farthings
Summary: 'I am breaking Mr Segundus’s trust in writing to you without his knowledge, but he will not hear of doing it himself. I do not know if you have quarrelled, but I beg you to return to Starecross with all possible urgency. Mr Segundus remains ill. The doctor has visited twice this week, and I fear he can only be with us again soon. I do not know if you can be of any assistance, but it is most serious.'





	1. Two of Batons

**Author's Note:**

> Two of Batons: Surprise, consternation, fear, trouble. 
> 
> Warnings: Some medical icky things and fairly detailed reference to terminal illness if you're sensitive to that. A bit of period-typical stuff surrounding homosexuality.

Childermass has not even removed his boots before the knock comes at the door.

“Who is it?” he says sharply. He has been riding most of the day and is in no mood for conversation.

“Letter for Mr Childermass. Landlord said he’s taken this room.”

Childermass sighs, gets to his feet and opens the door. The messenger holds out a piece of grubby paper, smeared and torn at the edges.          

“What did you do, use it as a shoe?”

The messenger flushes. “It was like that when I got it – I’ve only brought it Bradford to Leeds. The man before said he’d come from Lincoln.”

Childermass blinks. He was only two days in Lincoln, and less than that in Bradford. Someone is going to great pains to find him.

He digs a coin out of his pocket. The messenger bobs nervously, hands him the letter and scurries off. Childermass turns back into the room, kicking the door shut behind him.

“The York Society?” Vinculus wipes gravy off his chin as he chews the last of the pie Childermass had ordered for supper. “It has a northern smell, I think.”

“You no more smell the north in this than I do.” Childermass turns the letter over. The seal is plain, pushed with a simple round of cork or wood. The York Society adopted the flare of the Starre Inn as its official symbol last year, and Arabella Strange uses her husband’s ring.

There is only one other person who would go to such efforts to get a letter to him, and he has not written in five months.

Childermass lifts the wax with a crack.  

 

_Mr James Honeyfoot to John Childermass July 15 th, 1818 _

_My good Mr Childermass,_

_I hope that this letter finds you swiftly. The last we heard was that you were in London, but that was in May and I understand that you have been travelling for some time. I am breaking Mr Segundus’s trust in writing to you without his knowledge, but he will not hear of doing it himself. I do not know if you have quarrelled, but I beg you to return to Starecross with all possible urgency._ _Mr Segundus remains ill. The doctor has visited twice this week, and I fear he can only be with us again soon. I do not know if you can be of any assistance, but it is most serious. Please, do not delay._

_You may find us awaiting your arrival at Starecross._

_Yours sincerely,_

_James Honeyfoot._

Childermass had not done anything so foolish as to swear that he would never to go back to Starecross. He knew the York Society would require his or Vinculus’s presence, or that some other unavoidable business would take him to Yorkshire, even to the hall itself. But he has kept his mind from it, to the extent of burning every one of Segundus’s letters without opening them. England is still settling after the disappearance of Strange and Norrell, magical factions splitting and spatting, and he has been busy with the King's Book. Now, Honeyfoot’s letter reaches into his head and plucks memories not properly buried. 

He frowns.  _Mr Segundus remains ill_. Remains. Honeyfoot’s handwriting is neat, but the letter has not been properly aired before folding and blots of ink smudge the words. It must have been written in some haste.

The date is more than three weeks old. 

“Well?” Vinculus raises an eyebrow.

Childermass clenches his fist around the letter, wrinkling the paper. “We are going to Starecross.”

           

*

  

He leaves Vinculus a little way outside Leeds – Brewer cannot carry both of them for long, and Childermass needs to go faster than he can walk.

“Don’t you worry about me,” Vinculus says, grinning. “I shan’t run off.”

“I have no fear of that.” Vinculus may infuriate him at times, but they’ve been travelling for long enough to somewhat trust each other. "I will see you at the hall."

Vinculus steps back, straightens his hat. “You had better ride quickly – it is going to rain.”

Vinculus, as usual, is right. The fair weather holds until the afternoon, but by the time York comes into sight the Minster is shrouded in grey cloud. Soon after, the sky bursts. Fields flood within minutes, mud scudding over the uneven country tracks. Childermass curses and pulls back on the reins to slow Brewer’s pace. The sky darkens, though the air stays hot. Childermass follows the road on instinct, navigating the maze of country lanes, sheep ditches and stone walls without truly seeing them. Rainwater gathers on the brim of his hat.

He had been quietly pleased when Mrs Lennox and Segundus announced their intention to turn the hall into a school, once Norrell could no longer object. Starecross was unsuitable for a madhouse, despite its location – there were too many places to hide, and a hundred ways in and out. The pupils were eager, and Mr Segundus even more so. It was a good thing, good for the hall, good for magic.

Starecross village is quiet, lights blinking at the windows. No-one is about. The road turns from dirt to stone, and the packhorse bridge to the hall looms out of the dark. Childermass's stomach sinks. Water drips from the hedges in the gardens and makes puddles in the flower beds. Trees creak and sway. Only a handful of windows are lit. Childermass frowns – even if some of the pupils have returned home to help with the harvest, there are always those who stay. In the early evening, even in the middle of a storm, it has no business being so quiet.

No-one sees him approach, or they aren’t inclined to greet him if they do. Childermass ties Brewer by the stream that ripples through the east part of the grounds and throws a blanket over him to keep the rain-spatter off. Brewer snorts. Childermass pats his nose and hurries to the house, making instinctively for the kitchen entrance. Weak candlelight filters under the door. There is no sound of rushing feet or crashing pans.

He knocks twice.  

“Who’s there?” Charles’s voice is hoarse.

“Childermass.”

Charles opens the door. His face is pale and a piece of potato peel is stuck to his apron.

“You have come at a bad time.”

“What has happened?” Childermass steps past Charles into the kitchen, tugging his hat from his head. Rainwater patters onto the stone flags. “I received a letter that Mr Segundus had been taken ill.”

Charles pulls off his apron. His hands shake. “I will go fetch Mr Honeyfoot. He will want to explain it himself.”

Childermass’s blood chills underneath his damp skin. “Is it so serious?”

“Please…wait here. Leave your boots by the fire – they must be very wet.”

Charles hurries out of the room, leaving Childermass with his mouth open. The hook that holds the maid’s aprons is crammed – meaning that none of them are here, or at least, they aren’t wearing their aprons – so Childermass hangs his coat over the nearest chair and puts his dripping hat on top of it. The cards slip easily into his hand. He shuffles carefully, keeping his mind loose. They never tell him what he needs to now if he forces the question onto them. He turns them over slowly. Two of batons, six of cups...

“Mr Childermass!”

Childermass starts, almost dropping the deck. Honeyfoot’s ruddy face has lost some of its usual colour, and his hair is thinner, but he moves into the kitchen with his usual energy, almost dragging Charles after him.

“I got your letter.” Childermass folds the cards back into his waistcoat and gets to his feet.

“Which one?”

“15th July.”

Honeyfoot winces.

“What?” Childermass steps forward. “What is wrong with Mr Segundus?”

Honeyfoot and Charles exchange a glance.

“It is the consumption.”

Honeyfoot’s voice is barely a whisper, but it reverberates in Childermass’s head like a bell. The house sways. Childermass reaches for a chair, misses, and steadies himself against the table.

He does not ask Honeyfoot to repeat himself, does not feign disbelief. It all makes too much sense. 

“That is why there are no pupils,” he murmurs. His knuckles are white, close to his skin. 

“The doctor thought it best. These things are apt to spread, especially in warm weather.” 

“How long?”

“Since the spring.” Honeyfoot looks apologetic. “He fell ill with his chest January and could not seem to shake the cough, and then he got worse and..." He swallows. "The doctor has tried all he can, I have even looked into magic, but there is nothing Mr Segundus or I know that will help. Mr Segundus made me promise not to bother you with it, but he has been so bad since June, and I thought that you would…want to be informed. I cannot pretend that I know what argument you have had, but I could not in my right mind leave you ignorant.”

“Is there any hope?” Childermass’s voice catches in his throat.

“The doctor says there is not.”

The light dims. For a moment, Childermass is convinced he is on the deck of a ship, and the floor is rolling back and forth beneath his feet.

“I need to see him.”

Honeyfoot gives him a long look. “The doctor says that he is not to be made too excited.”

 _Hang the doctor!_ Childermass wants to shout, but he only nods.  

“Very well. Follow me.”

“I would rather go alone.”

“I am not sure…”

“I give you my word, I will do nothing to make him worse.”

Honeyfoot sighs. “We put him in Lady Pole’s old room – it has the most space, and there are no stairs. We can ready you some warm towels before you catch a chill yourself.”

Childermass looks down at the wet patches on his trousers and shirt. He had forgotten the rain. “Brewer will need bringing in.”

"I'll get him." Charles hurries around the table. A draught blows in as he opens the door to the garden, then is quickly shut off.

Childermass makes to step out of the kitchen, but Honeyfoot puts a hand on his arm. “If Mr Segundus is out of sorts, then you must forgive him. He is very ill.”

Childermass nods. Honeyfoot stands aside. 

The hall is dim, his boots too loud on the flags. There is an odd smell – of dust and enforced silence - and the door to Lady Pole’s room is closed. Childermass hesitates in front of it, throat dry. He should knock, but then Segundus will ask who it is. Somewhere deep in the house, a clock strikes four. The rain beats on the roof and windows, a hundred tiny heartbeats. 

Childermass clenches his fists, knocks once and pushes the door open before he can receive an answer. The air of the room is close and sour - it takes him back to the kitchen table in Hanover Square, a pair of tweezers in the flesh of his shoulder and the grip of magic at the edge of his thoughts.

“Ah.” Segundus’s voice is thin as Venetian glass. Sheets rustle. “I wondered if Mr Honeyfoot would write to you. I told him not to, but I thought…perhaps…”

Segundus is propped on the bed in the middle of the room, a basin at his left hand and his right in a fist on his chest. The sheets are tucked up to his waist, rumpled and stained. Segundus has always been short and thin, but he’s shorter and thinner now, and his lips are cracked.  He looks at Childermass sideways, like he doesn’t have the strength to turn his head.

“I am glad you have come during the day. I am very much worse at night.”

Childermass opens his mouth, shuts it again.

“I am sorry to have shocked you. I was not so bad, in the spring. I was busy with my book, and I had the pupils to think of. I told you as much in my letters.”

“I did not read them.” The confession slips out before he can stop it.

Segundus smiles. It’s too long for his thin face. “That is good.”

“Good?”

“Of course. I would much rather that you never read my letters than ignored them.”

“You did not send any after April.”

“I told you that I was ill, and you did not come.” Segundus takes another loud breath. There is a rattle in his chest like a sail in a storm. “I thought that if you did not return knowing that, then nothing would bring you back.”

Childermass wishes he hadn’t left his hat and coat in the kitchen – he feels very exposed in only his damp shirt and waistcoat. “I would have come.”

“John...”

“Don’t.”

The shadows around Segundus’s mouth lengthen as his lips turn down. “I am sorry. But there is no-one here – the pupils have all been sent away.”

There is a chair by the bed. Childermass sits on it, puts his elbows on his knees. “If someone were to hear…”

“It is not proper, I know.” Segundus’s knuckles are white, his fingers thin. “But you see, I am a respectable figure these days. No-one suspects me of improper things.”

“And me?”

Segundus’s mouth twitches. “That is different. You look quite like a rogue from one of Miss Radcliffe’s stories. I knew it when I first saw you at Hurtfew – I could hardly remember what I had seen there in the library, but, after you came to visit Lady Pole, and we turned you away…I found that I remembered the way you stood against the wall – like a tree, like…like you had no respect for anything you saw. I was half-afraid of you, really, but…but…”

“Segundus…”

“I wish you would call me John. I do not think anyone would notice.”

“Is it magic?”

“What?”

"This." Childermass nods at the bed, the bloodstained sheets and the chipped white basin. "Some…remnant of last year?”

“My parents both died young, and a weak constitution was always likely to be my inheritance. So, no. I do not believe so.” He smiles again. “Thankfully, none of the pupils seem to have developed it. They will come back soon, when this is over.”

Childermass hasn’t much liking for the word ‘over’, but he cannot pretend there’s any comfort in this room, with its stale air and the window fastened tightly shut.

Segundus stretches out his hand and puts it on Childermass’s wrist. His fingernails are too long, and they pinch. “I am glad you have come.”

“Segundus…”

“You must not…” Segundus swallows. “There is nothing to be done about the way things are, or the way they were left. I am simply glad that you are here. You are my friend, I hope.”

Childermass is still reaching for a reply when Segundus pitches forward, bracing his hand against Childermass’s knee. A cough echoes off the stone walls and blood mists the rim of the basin. Childermass moves instinctively, putting his free palm to the small of Segundus’s back to help him to lean forward. Coughs race up one after the other, hardly a breath between them. Segundus’s nightgown turns damp, and the knobs of his spine shift under Childermass’s hand. A vein stands out on his forehead.

At last, the coughs fade, first to gulps, then to a steady rasp. Segundus murmurs something, but his voice is too hoarse to make out.

“I can’t hear you.” Childermass’s heart is in his boots. He had seen consumption enough in his childhood and at sea, but never so closely, never in someone who he cared so much about.

“I said…” Segundus’s eyes are closed. He makes no attempt to open them. “That I no longer have any faith in the poets…dying is most unpleasant.”

“Aye.” Childermass tries to laugh, fails. “I could have told you that before now.”

Silence stretches, apart from the wheeze at the back of Segundus’s throat. They are both waiting for something, but Childermass isn't certain what.

“Segundus,” he murmurs. “John…”

“No.” Segundus squeezes his eyes more tightly shut. “Do not call me that because I am dying. It is not fair.”

Childermass looks at his lap. “Is there anything I can do?”

“You would be better to leave. Go back to London.”

“I am not leaving you like this.”

“There is nothing to be done. I will not get any better, only a great deal worse.”

Childermass winces. Segundus looks like a ghost already - the months show in the shadows on his face, the loose skin of his neck. 

“I will stay,” he says firmly. 

No reply. Childermass looks up. Segundus is quiet on the bed. His eyes are still shut, but the lids are relaxed and his breathing is even, apart from the wheeze at the back of his throat.

“John?”

Nothing. Childermass waits a moment and then, gently, he moves Segundus’s hand from his knee and puts it on the bed. Segundus shifts, pursing his cracked lips. His eyelids are almost translucent, blue veins standing out sharply.

Childermass takes the stained basin from the covers and pushes his chair aside. Perhaps the house senses his need for quiet, because the hinges of the door don’t creak as he steps through it.

 

*

 

He runs into Honeyfoot in the hall, stepping to the side just in time to avoid spilling the basin over him.

“My apologies.” His voice is hoarse. “Mr Segundus is asleep, and I did not know what to do with this.”

“Charles can empty it in the outhouse.”

“No. I will do it.” He has to get outside, away from Lady Pole's room and the smell of blood. 

“You should get dry. Charles has some towels.” Honeyfoot sighs. “I suppose this has been rather a shock for you.”

“How long has he been like this?”

“He has been very ill for some time, but he has been bedridden these past three weeks.” Honeyfoot shifts. “In fact, I wanted to ask, now that you have seen him, if…only you have been reading the King’s Letters.”

Blood rushes in Childermass’s ears. “If there were anything I could do, do you not think I would have put it into the world to be used?” He shakes his head. “I have gleaned almost nothing this past year.”

“But…Mr Childermass, you are one of the best magicians England has left. Can you not try?”

“Hundreds of people die every year,” Childermass growls. “Why should he be saved, out of all of them?”

Honeyfoot’s round face twists in shock. Childermass pushes past him and all-but runs out of the hall. He ignores Charles calling his name, kicks open the kitchen door and strides into the garden. Rain plasters his hair to his face and neck. The air is confused, halfway between chill and cloying. A tree showers him with heavy droplets as he pushes through its branches.

His foot catches on a root and the basin slips from his grasp into the mud. He stares at it, uncomprehending, like a stranger who’s done him a great offence. He wants to believe Honeyfoot, believe that there is something to be done. Pale’s  _Restoration and Rectification_  might reverse a recent calamity, but this is no accident, and far from recent.  _Teilo’s Hand_  might stop a flow of blood or other fluid, but Childermass knows nothing more than its name and hasn’t much idea of how to perform it. Even if he did, Segundus is in the last stages. His body must be damaged beyond immediate repair.

He knows of nothing else - Strange and Norrell are gone and the Raven King vanished to who knows where. Water drips from his hair, traces the thin scar on his cheek and trickles into his collar. He’s too late.  

A twig cracks, and Childermass starts. Honeyfoot is hovering at his elbow, looking apologetic.

“I did not mean to disturb you,” he says. “Only, I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

Guilt warms Childermass's cheeks. He looks up, forces himself to meet Honeyfoot’s eyes. Stripped of his ruddy complexion and boundless energy, Honeyfoot looks every one of his years.

Childermass clears his throat. “I did not mean to be curt. What I meant was, that I can save no-one with magic, no matter who they are.”

“I understand, sir. I did not hold out much hope, but I had to ask. Mr Segundus is almost like my own son. He has so much passion…” Honeyfoot’s face shifts, and he steps back. “My apologies. I am being maudlin – I often get so when I am tired, and I have not seen High Petergate in two weeks.”

“You are good, to stay here when everyone else has gone.”

"We might have hired someone to do it, but neither Charles or myself wanted that. He does not deserve the company of strangers when...well."

Childermass stoops, picks up the basin. “I hope you understand that I will stay and help you, now that I am here.” There is no question of him doing anything else. He cannot leave.

“Oh! That is greatly appreciated – we have found it quite difficult, Charles and I. I would have written to you sooner, but Mr Segundus did not want me to.”

He looks at Childermass hopefully. Childermass inclines his head, says nothing.

“Ah. No matter.” Honeyfoot looks like it matters a great deal, only he does not have the courage to say so. “Scholars will argue about the most trivial things, and you have been very busy. You are here now, and that is what matters.”

“Yes. I am here now.” The words are hollow and uncomfortable.

“Come.” Honeyfoot smiles. “The house is not so bad – I spend a lot of time in the kitchen these days. It is cool when the weather gets warm, and a small fire is welcome at night.”

Honeyfoot takes the basin and puts it under his arm, turning back to Starecross. He doesn't invite Childermass to follow him, but Childermass does. There is no other choice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time since I posted, even wrote, fanfiction. I started this two years ago after watching the TV show and reading the book, and recently dusted it off, finished it, did about eight edits, and ended up with this. I've debated long and hard about posting, but the characters and the story have swallowed me up for the past six months and if I don't, I won't ever put this down again. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I am not a doctor - I did a bit of research into consumption, but please forgive me if there are some medical inaccuracies. I'm also not an expert on tarot or the cards of Marseilles, so please don't take the chapter titles too seriously.


	2. Six of Cups

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Six of Cups: The past, memories, looking back

Less than an hour after he’d seen Hurtfew rise in a storm of cloud and vanish into the sky, Childermass dismounted Brewer outside Starecross and pulled Vinculus after him. They had met no-one on the road and he was half-scared that there was nothing left, that the black cloud had taken all there was of England.

Strange and Norrell were gone. The notion battered the inside of his head with a swarm of questions and half-answers. Hot blood dripped down his chin. His whole body was unsettled, like it remembered what he did not. Something had happened at the tree where he'd found Vinculus, something not of this world, and yet…of the north.

The air of the hall had changed. It was thick with magic, cloying and sweet. A powerful thing happened - powerful, and with bad intentions. Childermass clenched his jaw, took Brewer by the head and pulled him up the front path. Stones rattled under his boots. Vinculus trailed behind him, breath still rasping from the noose.

“Hello?” Childermass called.

Silence. Brambles swayed in the wind.

“Hello?” Desperation crept into his voice. “Anyone?”

“Mr Childermass!” Segundus’s head appeared amongst the hedges, hair awry and face deathly pale, apart from two bright spots of colour on his cheeks. Childermass was struck by the memory of their second meeting at Starecross, when Segundus had stood in front of him and refused to let him see Lady Pole. “Thank goodness! We thought…” He gestured frantically at the sky. “We had such a…Mr Black has vanished, and Lady Pole is…is…he was quite terrible, Mr Childermass, I thought that he would kill us all, and then, I do not know what it was, only that it was very big, and the whole air went faint with magic…I thought for a moment that the world was…was changed in some way.”

“Strange and Norrell are gone.”

Segundus faltered. “What?”

“Gone. Into the sky, with the pillar of darkness.” A drop of blood splashed onto the path. “I do not know where.”

Segundus took a deep breath, though his eyes were bright and tearful. “You must come inside. Come to the kitchen, before you bleed anymore. You can leave your horse in the grounds - there is no-one here to bother him.”

Childermass tried to protest, but Segundus took him by the arm and dragged him inside, pushing him into a chair by the fireplace. Vinculus shuffled quietly into the house. Segundus did not seem to notice. He filled a basin with water and scrambled for a towel amongst a pile of clean linen.

“Here.” He pressed a wet cloth to Childermass’s face. “I am no surgeon, but it is not bleeding so badly. You should seek a doctor, though, when you can.”

Childermass shrugged. “I have plenty of scars. One more will do me no harm.”

“What happened? Did you find the thing you were looking for?”

“I…” He reached for memories, thoughts that should be there, but somehow weren’t. “I did, and then…something happened on the road.”

Segundus dropped the cloth into the basin. The water had gone pink and stringy with drying blood. “Did you hit your head?” His hand came up to Childermass’s cheek, turning his face towards him. His fingers were warm. “You seem…muddled.”

A blow to the head. That might have explained it, except there was a buzz of magic on his forehead, an invisible flame between his eyes.

“No, I think-”

A shout from upstairs. Segundus jumped, fumbling the basin and almost upsetting it. Water slopped over Childermass’s knees.

“My apologies, Mr Childermass, I must go – that is Sir Walter and Lady Pole. There has been…some disturbance here.”

Segundus hurried into the hallway. Childermass got to his feet and followed. Motes of dust swirled in the light. A door was pulled off its hinges. The windows were shattered, the floor glittering with broken glass and black feathers. A blunderbuss Childermass recognised all too well lay abandoned against the wall. And…was that a sword?        

“Some disturbance?” he murmured. “Is that all?”

Segundus did not, or pretended not to hear him, crunching debris as he ran to Lady Pole’s room. Childermass moved swiftly after him, pressing his sleeve to the damp cut on his face.

Vinculus stood next to the bed, examining a shard of glass through narrowed eyes. Lady Pole and Sir Walter were seated on stools, a good distance from each other. Sir Walter watched Vinculus warily, but Lady Pole’s eyes stayed on her husband. They were nothing short of murderous.

Mr Honeyfoot clasped a broom close to his chest, but if he’d been trying to clear up he had not got far.

“Who are you?” Sir Walter got to his feet. His eyes were oddly swollen, collar awry. “I will not have you in here. My wife has had quite enough disturbance for one day, Mr…”

“Vinclulus.” Vinculus tossed the piece of glass aside, bared his yellow teeth. “You would do well to pay me more respect.”

Sir Walter drew himself up. “Now see here-”

“Do not trouble yourself, husband.” Lady Pole stood, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders. “I have no need of your help, or anyone else’s.”

Sir Walter stuttered. Segundus slipped deftly into the centre of the room, placing himself between Vinculus and the Poles. “Might I recommend, Mr Vinculus, that you go to the parlour? There is cheese and bread, if you are hungry.”

Vinculus cocked an eye at Childermass. Childermass nodded.

“I accept your kind offer, magician.” Vinculus swept into a mocking bow. “I will be seeing you shortly.”

He tottered out of the room. Slowly, Sir Walter returned to his seat. Lady Pole drifted towards the window, her bare feet making a soft, papery noise on the stones.

“Now, then.” Childermass took a deep breath. “What on earth has happened here?”

Segundus and Honeyfoot, between stuttering and shivering, told him the whole story. Sir Walter kept silent, and Lady Pole interjected only once. The harshness of her voice was startling.     

“Are you alright?” Childermass said to Segundus later, when Sir Walter and Lady Pole had left, when Mr Honeyfoot had returned home to his wife and children and Vinculus had gone God knew where, and they were alone in Starecross amongst the broken glass and feathers. Segundus was attempting to sweep the mess into a corner, but he kept dropping the broom.

“I am…as well as can be expected.”

“What happened cannot have been pleasant.”  

“It was the least pleasant thing I have ever experienced.” Segundus’s voice was reedy. Tiny grazes peppered his cheek, though none were deep enough to bleed. “But I am not hurt. The spell was broken soon after Mr Black vanished.” He shuddered. “I hope that he is alright.”

Childermass doubted it. A lot of people had vanished in the course of a few hours, and he was certain none were coming back.

Segundus stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom, running a hand over his mouth.

“I keep wondering if it has changed,” he said, not looking at Childermass. “All the mirrors are broken. Mr Honeyfoot’s ears looked no different, but-”

“It looks the same.” Childermass had the sudden urge to put his hands over Segundus’s lips, feel the rush of his warm breath in the cold house, but he dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. It had been a long day, and he was tired.

Segundus tried to speak, but Childermass turned away.

 

*

 

Childermass wakes with a start, the touch of Segundus’s breath still on his fingertips. For a moment, he thinks he’s still dreaming – the place he’s in smells like Starecross, but he swore he wouldn’t go back so soon after what happened, after they had…

He blinks, and the kitchen comes into focus around him. The fire has shrunk to a faint glow. Childermass is on a low chair, legs stretched in front of him, pipe in his lap. His hair is damp.

A stab of painful realisation makes him sit up, sending the pipe clattering to the floor. 

Segundus had tried to follow him after he’d pulled away, but they’d run into Vinculus eating his way through an entire wheel of cheese in the parlour and whatever might have been said was set aside for another time. Childermass left the next day to salvage what he could of Mr Norrell’s books, only to find when he reached London that the house in Hanover Square had vanished, along with all its contents. It was a strange sight – an empty place in the street, no foundations, no rubble. As if it had never existed.

He'd moved around the country for a long time after that, looking for signs of Strange, Norrell, Stephen Black, even what might remain of Drawlight or Lascelles. He never found any of them, nor any of Norrell’s books. The only person who returned was – remarkably – Arabella Strange, who arrived from Venice with a young lady and her father but could only do so much to shed light upon the strange events when he visited her.

There was a single meeting of the York Society in March where Segundus tried to speak to him, but Childermass was swamped by people and questions, and Segundus, ever-polite, allowed himself to be pushed to the back of the room. Childermass left York that same night for Shropshire and was away from Starecross until September.

When he did return, it was because he had exhausted all his other options and Yorkshire called to him like rain on a hot day.

Segundus was in the garden when Childermass arrived, explaining the properties of the trees that grew in the grounds to a gaggle of eager-looking students, some no more than children, others much older. His face, when he saw Childermass, lit up like a star.

At the time, there was nothing dangerous, nothing that couldn’t be imagined in a dark corridor after a bad day. Still, Childermass did not like the way the thought of Segundus’s lips came back to him. It was an irrational thought, and one to be wary of. He tightened his hands on Brewer’s reins. He would be polite to Segundus, but no more. No-one would think it odd – he was surly by nature. Segundus had implied so, more than once.

“Mr Childermass!” Segundus almost bounced as he approached, trailing a handful of the younger pupils in his wake. The air was warm, and the sunlight shone soft on his dark hair. “This is unexpected – but most welcome! Most welcome!”

Childermass smiled before he knew that he was doing it.

He should never have given in to Segundus’s excitement, the smell of summer’s end and the hum of bees in that garden. If he hadn’t, he would not be here now, knuckles pressed to his forehead. The low fire shudders, and his muscles ache.

Staying will make it all the more painful, but he can’t run. He promised Honeyfoot his help, and Segundus seemed glad to see him. Too glad, considering all that has happened.  

“Enough,” he murmurs, getting to his feet and stretching. His boot catches his pipe, sending it across the floor into the ashes in front of the fireplace. He stoops to pick it up, but a sound from the hallway catches his attention. The kitchen door is open, and through it comes muffled shouting.

He puts his head into the hall. The door to Segundus’s – to Lady Pole’s – room is open, a candle casting flickering shadows.

Childermass goes in without knocking. Segundus is sitting up, Honeyfoot supporting him on his left side whilst Charles holds a wet rag to his forehead. The three of them are drenched in sweat - Segundus’s nightgown is so sodden that it’s almost transparent.

“What can I do?” Childermass strides to the bed, pushing his sleeves to his elbows.

Charles jerks his chin. “Get rid of the blankets.”

It is not an easy task – the sheets are heavy and tangled around not only Segundus, but Honeyfoot and Charles as well. Childermass tries pulling them from the bottom, but Segundus jerks as they snag on his feet, and he cries out. 

Childermass sets his jaw and moves towards the top of the bed, taking the task more gently. His hands are steady – he’s not certain if, at one point, he whispers a half-spell, and less sure whether it does any good, but at last the sheets come clear. Childermass drops them onto the floor. Segundus’s coughing eases, and he falls back against the headboard, shivering. Charles presses the cloth against his neck. Honeyfoot pulls the basin away and sets it on the nightstand.

“What is this?” Childermass mutters. “A fever?”

“The doctor says not.” Charles’s bottom lip is ragged from chewing. “It only comes on at night.”

Honeyfoot nods. “Apparently, it is common with the condition – the sweating usually eases off by morning. Until then, all we can do is keep him comfortable.” He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “Charles – could you fetch more water?”

Charles hands the cloth over and hurries away.

“I did say that I was worse at night,” Segundus murmurs.

“I wish you had not demonstrated it so well.” Childermass sits on the edge of the bed, finding Segundus’s hand on the far side from Honeyfoot and pressing it for a moment – only for a moment. Segundus has lost his daytime pallor, and his face is covered in angry flush. 

“You should rest, Mr Segundus.” Honeyfoot says. “It is only three in the morning.”

“I have done nothing but rest these last three weeks. It is not doing me any good.”

“Nevertheless-”

“Perhaps some fresh air,” Childermass cuts in. “We could take a turn around the garden in the morning, when you are better. If the weather is fine.”

He speaks without thinking, and the look Honeyfoot gives him is disapproving.

“The doctor says he should not be moved too much.”

“The doctor has as little hope as the rest of us.” Segundus’s voice is sharp, and he opens his eyes at last. Despite the feverish sweat, they’re clear and focused. “Charles and I spent a long time making those gardens the way they should be – it is a shame for them to go to waste.”

Honeyfoot sighs. “Perhaps, then.  _If_ the weather is good.”

Segundus smiles, and Childermass feels it like a blow to the chest.

 

*

 

Childermass knew something must happen, but he refused to see it – even to the extent of not looking at his cards for days at a time, under excuses he gave only to himself. The first smile outside Starecross turned into another, and then another. Vinculus was disgruntled at being ‘pulled around the country like a pig on a lead,’ and Childermass’s means were not inexhaustible. It was sensible to stay at Starecross rather than taking rooms in York, so he agreed to remain for a fortnight whilst he mapped the roads in the area and took notes in the Minster. Then he stayed for another week, because the next York Society meeting was so close there was really no point in going elsewhere. Soon he was an almost permanent fixture at the house, so much so that the kitchen started bringing in a regular supply of pies for Vinculus and Childermass began to know the students by name.

It was strange. He had lived at Hurtfew for over twenty years, but he'd never felt more at home than he was at Starecross, with its twisting gardens and magic stones. The King’s Letters came easier to him amongst them, when he could make Vinculus stand still enough for him to read them. When he travelled, he found that he missed the air of the place, the chatter of the students and Segundus’s quiet, determined way of teaching them. It was not a feeling that he was familiar with – he had not had many acquaintances with whom he had felt the need to stay in contact before now. It was odd to be in Shropshire or London and find himself thinking of what John Segundus might be doing at that particular time of day. But Starecross was a place of magic, and not so far from Hurtfew. With Strange and Norrell gone, there were few people in the country who understood magic like Segundus and Honeyfoot, and it was natural that Childermass should enjoy their company.

He and Segundus bickered, at first. Segundus would tell Childermass to take his stocking feet off Starecross’s surfaces, or chastise him for helping himself to the stores, or simply for ‘leaning on every wall of my school like a ghost with a bad case of melancholy, do you never stand up  _straight_ ’. Childermass would twitch his lips and slouch off, knowing Segundus was shaking his head behind his back. He left his muddy boots in places where they might trip people up and took naps on windowsills and in the garden like a ‘disreputable vagabond’. He teased Segundus about his new waistcoat, and about their first meeting at Starecross, Segundus’s shivering anger on the front steps. It was not as dangerous a subject as he might have expected. Segundus went red and protested that Childermass had been ‘quite out of order to act in such a way, even under Norrell’s orders’, but there was no true malice behind it.

“What are you reading?”

Segundus jumped, almost upsetting his cup of tea where it sat at his elbow on the library table. He turned to glare at Childermass. “I wish you would not do that.”

“Do what?”

“Creep around like a shadow. You must use magic to appear so quietly.”

Childermass grinned, said nothing.

Segundus snapped the book shut. “Besides, it is none of your business what I read.”

Childermass tipped his head, glanced at the cover. “ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_?”

"Miss Elizabeth Honeyfoot recommended it. She has always been a devout reader, and in light of all that has happened lately…it is a pertinent play, in many ways." Segundus flushed. "I thought it wise to look into the less conventional literature of magic, seeing as we have no books, save one.”

Childermass’s mouth thinned at that, and he took his leave. He did not like to dwell too much on Norrell, though he spent half his time writing letters to people across the country in the hope of finding answers.

Honeyfoot and Segundus often took supper in the parlour, and when Childermass had been at the hall two weeks they invited him to join them. The evening rattled on over bread and butter, a glass of wine and then another, until Honeyfoot bid them good night and headed to his bed, and they were left alone.

“I should retire soon,” Childermass said. “I have been riding most of the day.”

Segundus nodded, but then he asked Childermass what he had been riding for, and by the time Childermass answered and Segundus asked another question the conversation took up and went on again. It was almost three in the morning when Childermass finally tore himself away.

Their meetings in the parlour became regular, two or three times a week. Each time, Honeyfoot left for his room. Each time, Childermass said he should retire, but there was always something more to be said, some fresh event of magical interest, a good-natured quarrel, even, rarely, a reminiscence about the past. And, despite the promise of a good mattress and a restful night, Childermass did not resist. Segundus understood magic in ways others did not. To push him away because they had different temperaments, or because of a single thought in a dark corridor, would have been churlish.

They bickered less, and then not at all, except in jest. Childermass grew to like the sound of Segundus’s voice. He made him laugh on purpose, just so he could hear it. It was unwise, but when Childermass was tired and full of food and good wine, he said things without thinking and enjoyed the sight of Segundus laughing. When he was away from Starecross, he often thought of when he would next see him.  _Like a girl with a beau_ , he’d chastise himself. _You are getting carried away_. But then he’d return and Segundus would say “What do you think of Levy’s new periodical?” or “Lady Pole sends her regards to us both – do you think I should enquire after Mrs Strange?” and before he knew it he would be reading over Segundus’s shoulder, their hands almost touching on the desk in the study. Segundus’s hands were not rough, but not smooth either, like a well-worn coat.

Once night in December, Childermass arrived late from Leeds. The day was long-gone and Starecross dark, apart from a single light in the kitchen. When he lifted the latch, he found Segundus in his shirt and breeches, his hair tousled, a candle flickering in his hand.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he said as soon as Childermass stepped through the doorway, pointing at the table where a loaf of bread and slice of cheese, hastily cut, rested.

“How did you know that I was here?”

Segundus shrugged. “I was working late. I heard Brewer.”

Childermass raised an eyebrow. “It is almost two in the morning.”

Segundus flushed. Childermass reached for a piece of cheese, let him change the subject. They talked briefly of Ormskirk and argued over the best items to use when attempting a protective charm. The candle burned low, a wine bottle falling a half-empty, and then fully empty.

“Surely you cannot think,” Segundus spluttered when it was almost dawn, his cheeks bright red, “that a yew twig would be more use than an oak when attempting to ward away ill-thought?”

Childermass shrugged. He had not slept in two days, and his thoughts were tangled with the wine. He kept his eyelids half-shut, admiring the way the guttering candlelight fell across Segundus’s neck.

“How did you know that I was coming?”

Segundus faltered. “Excuse me?”

“I arrived from the east – you could not have heard Brewer in your study even if you had the window open. I'd half a mind to stay the night in Leeds and ride here in the morning, so you cannot have predicted my coming. So, unless you have been watching me by magic…”

“Of course not! That would be most intrusive.”

“What, then?”

Segundus bit his lip, looked away. “I always know when you reach Starecross. I can…” He swallowed. “It sounds very foolish, but…I have always been rather sensitive to magic, as you know. I find, these days more than ever, that I can distinguish between one person and other, if I know them well. Do you not find the same?”

“I can sense the magic a person has, if that is what you mean.” Childermass leaned forward in his chair. “And what their intention might be behind using it. But I would not know that they were coming down the garden path unless they were a good deal more powerful than me – or more malignant.”

“You do yourself a disservice, sir. Your magic is strong, and it has grown over the past year.”

Childermass raised an eyebrow. “Has it?”

Segundus went, if possible, even redder. “I cannot explain how I know. It would sound very odd.”

Childermass tipped his head in challenge.

Segundus sighed. “It is not as simple as a seeing, or smelling, or…” He touched his brow, then his heart. “I can feel it most here. Mr Honeyfoot’s is like a chair – straight-backed, in old wood. It is very particular, though not strong. Whereas Miss Redruth’s is like a fire on the tip of control – one spread to the very edge of the hearth and onto the floorboards.”

“I see.” Childermass did not, not entirely. Sensing magic to him was as instinctive as breathing, and he did not have Segundus’s fine-tuned ability to decipher, his consideration.

Still, Segundus’s words plucked something inside him and drew him on.

“What do you sense in me, that has you getting out of bed in the night?”

Segundus shuffled forwards on his chair, putting his elbows on the table and cupping his chin in his hands. It was a position he never adopted when Honeyfoot was with them.

“I suppose…” He closed his eyes, breathed. “It is like rain in the summer. It should be out of place, but isn’t.”

Segundus opened his eyes. There was a glint of mischief in them. Nerves tickled the back of Childermass’s neck, the tips of his fingers. Their faces were close, noses almost touching.

“John…” Segundus said softly. He shuffled forward, hesitated, and pressed his lips to Childermass’s. He smelled of wine and candle smoke, and Childermass wanted to touch his face, his hair, his neck…

Childermass pulled back violently. His chair tipped on its legs, righted itself at the last second.

“I am sorry,” Segundus clapped his hands over his mouth. He was pale, all the flush of the wine gone. “I thought…I did not mean to offend – please…”

Childermass looked at Segundus. Saw him in a courthouse, members of the Society shaking their heads. In cold gaol, with people who had no respect for scholars, and less for...well.

They did not always hang men for it, but Segundus was a schoolmaster. Any rumour, any accusation…at the very least, Starecross would fold underneath the scandal, and the pupils sent home.           

He had been a fool. A reckless, damned fool, and he had only seen it now.

Childermass got to his feet, pulled his coat off the back of his chair. “You have misunderstood me, Mr Segundus." It took everything in his power not to let his voice shake. "I think it is best that we do not speak of this again.”

Segundus’s brow knitted. For a moment, he looked like he would say nothing, let Childermass stride from the room and escape onto the moor, but then he got to his feet.

“John Childermass, I do not believe you.”

Childermass faltered, his coat half over his shoulders. He looked into Segundus’s face, his kind, dark eyes and opened his mouth to tell him that he was offended at the very suggestion, that Segundus was a moonstruck fool, but no sound came out. The clock in the hall ticked frantically, pendulum pulling the mechanism,  _tock, tock, tock_.

He could not do it. Segundus would not have believed him, even if he tried.

“This place is all you have wanted and worked for. I will not take it away from you.”

The lines between Segundus’s eyes deepened. “I am not a child – I know the risks. We have no need to raise anyone’s suspicions, you are here so often anyway – I have put some thought into what we might-”

“Then you have wasted your time. You are wrong, to think anything at all about…about…” Childermass seized his gloves from the table and jammed them into his pocket. “Goodnight, sir.”

“But-”

Childermass pushed his chair under the table with a bang. “I said goodnight!”

Segundus stepped forward. “You cannot just…please, John-”

“Do not call me that.”

“Wait!”

Childermass did not wait. Segundus tried to step in his path, but Childermass turned his shoulder to him as he strode past the table, almost knocking him off his feet. He did not dare listen, did not dare look back.

He ran from Starecross, and he did not return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm cherry-picking things from both book and TV show here - hope it's not too confusing. 
> 
> I'll be updating this regularly - at least once a week, but preferably more. I'm glad a few people are enjoying it already!


	3. La Mort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> La Mort: Time, warning of death, remembrance of mortality, limitation.

Childermass wakes, and wishes he hadn't - his head is pounding like he'd spent the night smacking it against a wall. Segundus hadn’t fallen asleep until almost four in the morning, and by the time Childermass staggered downstairs and collapsed into a chair in the kitchen, his throat was scratchy and his temples sore. 

He forces his eyes open. The light from the kitchen window sends spots to the edges of his vision, but it clears the fog of a bad night with bad dreams. The kitchen is quiet. It might even feel peaceful, if he didn't know what was happening in the rest of the house. 

Childermass sighs, gets to his feet. Time is short, and he cannot waste it on a mere headache and a prickling sense of unease. He stretches until a bone clicks in his back, then goes to the door that leads to the garden. The sun is high and the grounds bright, though still wet, leaves dripping into pools and the grass ragged with water. A breeze plays with his hair and eases the throbbing in his head, but his stomach is tight. Apart from a few minutes the night before, he hasn’t spoken to Segundus in months. There'll be no avoiding it today. 

Perhaps some good will come of it, but the knot in his belly refuses to loosen.

Charles's footsteps sound in the hall behind him. Childermass turns.

"Good morning." Charles has an iron pot under his arm and dark shadows around his eyes. 

“What’s the time?”

“A little after eight.”

Childermass blinks. He’d slept later than he thought – later than he has in a long time. “Is anyone else…?”

“Mr Honeyfoot has yet to rise, but Mr Segundus has been awake for some time. He doesn't sleep well these days.” Charles bends, hefts the pot onto the fire and stirs the embers to life underneath it. The sweet, smoky smell of oats fills the kitchen. 

Childermass goes to the table, where his pipe rests next to a covered pat of butter. He hadn't picked it up when he fell into his chair the night before - Charles must have fetched it for him. 

“You are a brave man, to stay here when everyone else has gone.”

Charles pauses in his stirring, but only for a moment. “I have seen many strange and frightening things in his house, and this is not the strangest, though perhaps it is the saddest. I do not scare easily. Besides, Mr Honeyfoot couldn't manage alone – he does well for his years, but he cannot lift Mr Segundus by himself. Someone had to stay, if we were to keep this within the hall." 

Guilt pinches Childermass’s insides. Charles turns, letting the spoon rest against the lip of the pot. "Did you know that they said I could learn magic with the pupils, if I wanted?"

Childermass raises an eyebrow.

“They offered it to all the servants, if they thought they might benefit from it. I have no instinct for it, but one does not need to in order to see marvellous things happen and enjoy them.”

Childermass’s thoughts go to Hurtfew, the trickle of the river and the hot smell of magic that surrounded the orchard in summer. He swallows, picks up his pipe and turns it over between his fingers.

“Have you seen Vinculus?”

Charles shakes his head. "Did he sleep in the stables again?"

"I left him to walk from Leeds, in case I was too late. He's probably waylaid in a tavern somewhere." He sighs. Segundus will have a silver dish somewhere. "I'll look for him later.”

“Of course. I'll let you know if I see him.” Charles ladles porridge into a bowl and steps towards the door. “Help yourself – I must take this to Mr Segundus. He says he would like to go into the garden as soon as possible.”

Childermass wonders briefly how wise it is to go outside without Honeyfoot’s express permission, but the weather might turn later on, and he doesn’t want to disappoint Segundus. He approaches the fire, looks into the pot. The porridge is good, thick and made with milk, but the sight makes his stomach turn. He was never seasick when he was a sailor, but he imagines it is not so far away from what he is feeling now.

He goes back to the door and looks out into the grounds. If there were time, he’d take Brewer and go onto the moor to clear his head. He should have thought of it last night, woken up sooner…

He must have fallen asleep on his feet for a moment, because he doesn't hear Charles come back into the kitchen until he speaks. 

“Aren’t you going to eat? I am not a bad hand at porridge, you know.”

Childermass shrugs. “It’ll do very well cold.”      

Charles sighs, but doesn't protest. “I have set you up some chairs in the garden by the stream – near the holly bush. It doesn’t catch the wind like some other places, though it is a bit damp. Make sure to bring some of the blankets with you. The doctor says that Mr Segundus cannot get too cold.”

Childermass nods. A robin lands on a rock near the kitchen door, fluffing its feathers as it pecks for scraps. 

"Can I ask you something, Mr Childermass?"

"Mm?"

“Why did you go away so suddenly?”

Childermass blinks, grateful that his back is to the kitchen and Charles cannot see his face. “I had business in London.”

“For so long?”

“Other places as well. The King’s Letters are difficult – they take me all around the country.”

“Yes, but…” Charles trails off, almost plaintively. The thought occurs to Childermass that he is younger than he comes across – Childermass is not sure of his age, but he cannot be much older than some of the students. “We missed you here, that is all. Not just Mr Honeyfoot and Mr Segundus, and the York Society, but…all of us. Could you not have visited?”

Childermass takes a breath through his nose. “I was busy. If I had known that Mr Segundus was ill, I would have come back sooner.”

“Oh, I did not mean…I am sorry Mr Childermass. It is not my place.” Charles’s feet shuffle on the flags. “You can go see him now, by my reckoning. He does not eat much.”

Childermass turns. Charles is red-faced, staring fixedly at the porridge pot. Childermass should apologise for snapping at him, but apprehension clogs his throat, and he only nods.

He squares his shoulders, steps into the hall. The slate is cool, and the light turns the wainscoting golden. The smell of sweat still lingers in Lady Pole’s room, but Segundus is sitting up in the bed and he smiles when Childermass comes in.

"Good morning." 

“How are you feeling?” 

Segundus shrugs. “Not as poor as I did last night

“You did not have much breakfast.” In the clear morning light it’s impossible to miss how thin Segundus has become, and the full porridge bowl on the bedside table. Childermass's gaze lingers on the small, rust-coloured vial of laudanum next it. 

“The doctor brought it last week.” Segundus eyes the bottle with distrust. “It is quite awful, and I will not take any. It makes me feel enchanted, and I have not gone on so long that I cannot finish this as myself.”

Childermass forgets to breathe. He looks at Segundus, pale and shaky but sitting upright as if the word isn’t coming down around their ears and has the uncomfortable urge to hold him.

Segundus bites his lip. “I am sorry. I forget that this is new to you." 

Childermass shakes his head. He should say something comforting or helpful, but he cannot think what it might be. 

“Come,” he says instead. “Charles has set up some chairs in the garden.”

Getting Segundus out of bed proves difficult - his arms are thin, an he can barely push himself upright. In the end, Childermass has to pull him until he's sitting sideways on the bed, which sets off a flurry of coughing. Childermass fetches the basin and holds it in place until the bout eases, one hand on Segundus's back, trying it ignore the sharpness of his ribs like branches under the skin. 

"I am alright,” Segundus wheezes at last. The veins in his bare feet stand out blue and purple against the cold floorboards. “Give me a moment and I am sure that I can walk.”

Childermass, thinking of what Mr Honeyfoot would say if he awoke to find that Segundus had taken a fall, shakes his head.

"Please." Segundus grips the bedpost, knuckles white. "I will be very careful."

"I did not say that we wouldn't go." Childermass takes a sheet from the bed and wraps it tightly around Segundus's chest and arms. "Does that hurt?"

Segundus shakes his head.

"I'm going to pick you up." 

"What?"

Before Segundus can protest, Childermass hooks an arm under his knees, places the other around his shoulders, and lifts. Segundus lets out a breathy yelp. 

"Am I hurting you?" 

"No." Segundus clears his throat. "I was...startled, that's all." He wriggles. “Can you manage? I am not too heavy?”

“I'm fine.” In truth, Segundus is horribly light. “I am not that old yet.”

“Only because you are too stubborn to age.”

Childermass smiles, despite himself. There’s life in Segundus yet, perhaps more than the doctor thinks.

They make their way slowly down the hall to the kitchen, where Charles has thankfully made himself absent. The old pistol scar on Childermass’s shoulder aches, admonishing him for being out in the rain last night. He is not as young as he was, no matter what he tells Segundus, and he often feels the pull of time and travel on his bones if he stops for long enough to notice them.

He was always certain Segundus would outlive him. 

Segundus shifts as they step into the garden, stretching towards the light. “My God,” he whispers. “I had almost forgotten what the world smelled like.”

Childermass navigates carefully over the damp grass, towards the holly bush and the stream that runs eastwards a little way into the overgrown walks. The air is metallic and fresh from the night's rain.

Charles has placed the two chairs directly in a patch of sunlight. Childermass lowers Segundus carefully into the one closest the holly and wraps the trailing folds of the blanket around his bare feet to protect them from the damp. A pair of blackbirds chatter in a nearby hedge.

Segundus reaches for a sprig of holly and rubs a spiked leaf between his fingers with a smile. "I always think that holly is sadly underused in modern magic. It has Faerie ties, of course, but that does not mean it cannot be useful." 

Childermass pulls up his chair. As he sits, one of the blackbirds takes off with a squawk, beating its wings as it passes a few inches over their heads. Segundus jumps, then yelps as the holly leaf slides into his thumb. 

“I am alright,” he says quickly. He shakes his hand, throwing a drop of blood, grins sheepishly.

"You were talking about holly?"

"Oh...it does not matter. I should have liked to do a pamphlet on it, but I was always taken up with something else." Segundus wipes his bleeding finger on the blanket. “Did you know I have been writing a book of Jonathan Strange’s life?” 

Childermass shakes his head.

“I wrote to Mrs Strange and asked her if I might have some of his letters in winter. There was so much slander about Mr Strange when he was in Venice that nobody seems to know what is true, and I thought it was only fair to try and give an honest account, but I have not been able to work on it since…that is, I have run out of time.”

A spider crawls along its web, fastened between two thorns on a rosebush. Childermass makes an effort to say something, but the air has been squeezed out of him.

Segundus clears his throat. “Mrs Strange will be dreadfully disappointed. I must speak to Mr Honeyfoot and see if he might carry on with it, but I know he will be very busy soon with the school. He is worried about it, I think, but I have assured him that he will have no difficulty. There are some fine young gentlemen – even some ladies – at the York Society who might turn their hand to teaching.” Segundus puts a hand to Childermass’s elbow. “You could consider it. We are in sore need of teachers, and there will be no reason for you to keep away once I am gone.”

Childermass winces. The spider pauses in its spinning, bouncing up and down on its string.

"Childermass..."

"I am sorry. It is just...you are right." He clears his throat. "This is new to me."

Segundus sighs. "I never realised there was so much preparation for this kind of thing. Everyone must be ready - the doctor, Mr Honeyfoot. Me. I have read every book I could looking for an answer, for an explanation, but...there are none." He pulls the blanket closer around his shoulders. "Even the vicar has been informed, so he might come at short notice. Mr Honeyfoot insisted, and well…I did not want to refuse him, though my mother was Catholic.” He bites his lip. “Do not tell him. He does not know – it does not do well to have Catholic ties these days, but…” Segundus fumbles in his shirt with his free hand, bringing out a thin silver chain with a cross at the end. “These last few weeks, I could not bring myself to hide it away.”

“Your mother’s?”

Segundus nods. “I am not sure how much she would approve of magic. There are some religious men who say it is evil.”

“People will use magic what way they will, whether good or bad.”

“Perhaps.” Segundus plucks at the bedsheet. “Of course, buggery is rather frowned upon by all churches. It disrupts the social disorder.”

Childermass smirks. “John Segundus, you have never disrupted the social order in your life.”

“That is funny - Mrs Lennox said something similar to me, a long time ago.”

Childermass raises an eyebrow.

Segundus goes red. “It was not a part of the same conversation we are having!”

“I should hope not.”

“Oh…be quiet.”

“You know that I never follow orders.”

“That is why you are always in trouble. But I would not change you.” Segundus smiles, though for the first time, it doesn’t reach his eyes. He tucks the crucifix back into his nightshirt. “Do not let them bury it with me. My mother loved the sun, and she would not want it underground.” He tips his chin up to the sky, where the clouds are thin and silver against the blue. “It is nice to be out here. It is only a shame that there is no-one else here to see it, but…I have timed this whole thing very well, really – we might have closed for a few weeks over summer anyway, and the pupils will be back in time for September, I think.”

_September_. Childermass looks up and realises that Segundus’s eyes are bright with tears. He spares a quick glance around the garden. Neither Charles nor Honeyfoot are in sight. He turns his chair, puts his hand over Segundus’s, and squeezes.

Segundus squeezes back. “Often, I am just tired, like I could sleep for a year, but sometimes I am afraid. I have so much unfinished, and I do not know what is to come.”

A flash of determination makes Childermass's heart pound. He has the letters, once Vinculus arrives. There must be _something_ there. If he can buy time, or better…

He tries to say so, fumbling for the right words, but Segundus coughs, wrenching his hand away from Childermass’s and clamping it over his mouth. The remaining blackbird starts from the hedge with a frightened chitter.  

“I am sorry,” Segundus croaks, before Childermass can speak. “I am being morbid, and there is no point to it.”

“If you would like to talk-”

“No, no. I should rest my throat.” He wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “You are too quiet. Tell me about London, and the King's Book – I have missed our conversations about magic.”

“There is not much to tell.”

“There is always something to tell about magic.”

Segundus's face is earnest, so Childermass tries to give an account of his travels since December, but it’s strained and colourless and only highlights how little progress he has really made. There’s too much to leave out – Segundus entered often into his thoughts whilst he was away, and to admit any regrets when they have so little time would feel…false.

He trails off before he reaches Leeds, the messenger and the hurried ride to York, shakes his head. “There is not much more to say.”

“You were not in the north at all, then?”

“I was kept in London for longer than I expected, and then…” He shrugs. “I had a lot of things to do.”

The blackbirds regroup by the nettles on the other side of the stream, yellow beaks bright against the green. One plucks a stick from the ground, cocks its head, and takes into the air. The other follows. Childermass watches them intently, as if he could take into the air after them. 

“Have I been a complete fool?” Segundus murmurs. 

Childermass’s stomach drops. 

“Come.” Segundus sits up straighter. “December was a long time ago. There is no need to be afraid of it now.”

Childermass sighs, but he cannot lie now, any more than he could last year.

“You are not a fool. But-"

Segundus holds up a hand. "That is enough. I understand."

Sunlight reflects off the stream, throwing colours onto the white sheet. Wind rustles in the trees.

“I have been a fool before," Childermass says quietly. 

Segundus turns, curiosity chasing away the shadows under his eyes. "Really?"

"I loved a girl in East Riding, when I was sixteen. She looked after the flowers in the church. I picked her daisies, polished up my hat and my shoes - what there was of them - but when I reached the church, she wasn't there. I went around the back and found her in the graveyard with a boy from out of town. My friends found it very amusing."

"What happened?"

"She married a hat-maker, I think. Then…” He hesitates, but he has the crushing urge to go on, to _speak_. “I went to sea. There was a…liaison. He was a Lancashire man.” _One with a wicked smile and the smell of magic on him._ “He caught a fever near Spain, a long time ago.”

“I am sorry.”

“We would never have continued once one of us left the ship, even if...” He tips his head back, lets the sun warm his cheeks. “After that, I was in Norrell’s service, and I had no time for romantic dalliances. A night or two, but nothing…tangible.” 

Segundus’s mouth turns up at the side. “I can understand that – I was always too buried in my magic to concentrate on anything else.”

“The youngest Honeyfoot girl likes you.”

“Not in the way you are thinking, I assure you. Truly, I have never held much romantic affection for women, though I would like to think I have had friends in them.” 

A breeze rustles the holly leaves, and Segundus shivers. Childermass looks up. The sun is not as bright as it once was, the sky turning from blue to grey. 

“You're getting cold.”

“I am fine.” Segundus pulls the blanket closer. "We have hardly been here an hour. I feel quite strong.”

Childermass sighs. He has no more desire to return to Lady Pole’s sour-smelling room than Segundus does, but he cannot let him catch a chill. 

"We must go back to the house.” He gets to his feet. Segundus opens his mouth, and Childermass holds up a hand. “We can take a turn around the garden first, if you like.”

Segundus smiles. This time, it does reach his eyes.  

“I would like that very much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, that was a lot of dialogue and a bit of a slower chapter, but I felt like it needed to be there!


	4. Ten of Swords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ten of Swords: Tears, affliction, desolation, sorrow.

The chair creaks as Childermass lifts Segundus for the second time. “Where would you like to go?”

“Did you come on Brewer?” Segundus shifts, putting his arms around Childermass’s neck to steady himself. “I should like to go see him.”

“I cannot see why. He’s an ugly beast.”

“He is not.”

Childermass snorts. "If you say so."

“I do say so.”

"Well, in that case….”

Segundus laughs. Leaves snag Childermass’s shirt as he edges past the holly bush, lifting Segundus higher to avoid draping the sheet in the stream. The shadow of Starecross reaches out to them. Bees hum in the honeysuckle overgrowing a low stone wall, and then the air fills with the smell of fresh garlic and turned soil as they step into the vegetable garden. Childermass's trousers are wet from the stream, and water has soaked through his left heel. He needs a new pair of boots – he's been putting it off in the hope they will do another year, but the soles won’t last the winter.

Neither will Segundus.

His grip falters. Segundus gasps as he starts to slide, and Childermass has to stop and catch him.

“Sorry.” He forces a smile. “Need to look where I’m putting my feet.”

Segundus frowns. “Am I tiring you?”

“No.”

“Is it your shoulder?”

“I'm fine.”

The frown stays creased between Segundus's eyebrows. He shifts, legs dangling. "Let's wait here a moment." 

Childermass stops, leans back against the gate that leads into the garden and concentrates on the warmth of Segundus’s arms around his neck. It's not winter yet. They have time. 

Segundus takes a deep breath that ends in a wheeze. “Charles has been working hard on this garden - he is hoping to get an apple tree here next year, if the weather permits.”

“Is he?” Childermass’s voice comes out as a croak, though he tries to keep it steady.

“Mr Honeyfoot is especially fond of apples.”

The shadow of the house presses down on them like a hand. A beetle scuttles over a cabbage and takes into the air. Childermass’s arms start to tremble.

“Sorry,” Segundus murmurs. “We should go.”

“I can hold you.” Childermass adjusts his grip. “Do you really like it here?”

“I know there is no magic, but…I helped to make this garden, when we were just starting out. It is nice to think that it will still be here, when…later.” Segundus coughs, ribs pressing against Childermass’s through his waistcoat. “Life is strange, is it not? It changes so quickly. First the black tower, and then December, and now...this. Just think - if I had signed that contract, I would never have dared think of a school, and then we would not have had our madhouse and who knows what might have happened? You would be in London, and I would be...I do not know where I might be."

"There are not so many magicians in England. Our paths would have crossed soon enough."

"I do not know - the world is so big. It is past the size of dreaming, like an ocean, or…or a good man.”

Unease pricks Childermass's spine. “Are you alright?” 

Segundus sits up suddenly, digging his fingers into Childermass’s neck. “We must go back.”

“What?”

“Back!” Segundus squirms. “Back to the stream, please.”

“No. Honeyfoot will have my skin.” Childermass presses his hand to Segundus’s forehead. Hot and dry. “I’m taking you to the house.”

He expects Segundus to protest, maybe even get upset. He does not expect Segundus to fight him, twisting and kicking against the blanket. Childermass, caught off guard, staggers sideways into the low wall. Segundus’s elbow catches his chin, sending his head snapping back. He curses, spitting blood, and his hands slip. Segundus’s feet hit the ground hard and Childermass has to get an arm around his back to stop him pitching onto the soil.

“Stop it!” he snarls. “You’ll hurt yourself!”

Segundus’s eyes are clouded and strange, cheeks covered with an angry flush. He lashes out with his fist against Childermass's chest. 

"Stop!" Blood trickles down his chin from his swelling lip. He tightens his grip around Segundus’s shoulders. “We can go back if you just...stop.”

Segundus lowers his hand, breathing heavily.

"Alright. Let me pick you up.”

Slowly, Segundus raises his arms and puts them around Childermass’s neck. Childermass braces himself against the wall, takes Segundus’s weight and lifts him, not into his arms, but over his right shoulder.

He turns and steps out of the garden, heading straight for the house.

“No!” Segundus beats his fists against Childermass’s shoulderblades. “That is the wrong way! You said-”

“You’re not well. You need to rest.”

“Let me go!” Segundus growls. “Let me go, or…” His voice is swallowed by a cough. They stumble into the kitchen. Segundus makes a grab for the doorframe and Childermass has to drag him away from it, sending the coal bucket clattering over the flags in a cloud of soot. Segundus coughs again, and then again, with hardly time to breathe between them. His heart flutters against Childermass’s shoulder, worryingly fast. 

Childermass only just makes it to Lady Pole’s room before Segundus slips out of his grasp, landing hard on the bed. He curls sideways, tangling blankets. Blood speckles the mattress.

“Honeyfoot!” Childermass kneels, dragging over one of the pillows. Segundus grasps his hand and pulls, trying to lever himself onto the floor. "Charles!"

The door creaks and Honeyfoot, wearing only a nightgown, hurries in with Charles at his elbow.

“Something’s wrong." Childermass tries to stand up, but Segundus hangs grimly onto his hand. His nails are sharp enough to draw blood. "We were in the vegetable garden, and he started talking strangely - he wanted to go back to the stream and when I tried to bring him back to the house he...he _attacked_ me.”

"What?" Honeyfoot stares. "Did he fall?"

"No." As if Childermass would let him. "He seems too hot, though."

“You have overtired him – he is not to be made excited.”

“But we were barely out for an hour. He was fine until-”

“With all due respect, Mr Childermass,” Honeyfoot cuts across him, voice icy, “you have been here only two days. You are not experienced in these things. Now, step aside and let me see him.”

Childermass tries to get to his feet, but Segundus tightens his grip on his hand and he staggers, knocking into the bedside table. The bottle of laudanum breaks with a tinkle.

Charles leans over the bed to haul Segundus upright. Segundus lets out a sharp cry and releases Childermass's hand, leaving crescent-moon marks in his palm. He no longer seems to be trying to get out of bed, but perhaps he is simply coughing too much to move.

“What is this?” Charles mutters.

“I am not sure.” Honeyfoot presses his hand to Segundus’s forehead, frowns, and turns to Childermass. “Did you say that he was too hot?”

"Yes. A fever?”

Honeyfoot shakes his head. “He is cold.”

“Cold?” Childermass’s throat tightens. “That's not possible.”

“Mr Honeyfoot!” Charles grabs the basin and brings it under Segundus’s chin, just as Segundus pitches forward and vomits dark blood. 

Honeyfoot does something Childermass has never heard him do before – he swears, loudly.

Charles looks up, face pale. “Mr Childermass, I think you must fetch the doctor. I do not know how to ride and Mr Honeyfoot cannot with his leg."

The air freezes in Childermass's lungs. He doesn't want to let Segundus out of his sight, not now...

The stone echoes with another cough, setting his teeth on edge. Honeyfoot puts a hand on Segundus's head, murmurs something soft and comforting. 

Damn it all. They must have the doctor, and Childermass must go.

“Where can I find him?”

“In the village. His house has the blue door.”

Childermass steps towards to bed and puts his hand on Segundus's shoulder. Segundus, slumped over the basin with his hair plastered to his face, looks up. His lips are blue.  

“I’ll be back soon,” Childermass says. "I'm going to get the doctor."

Segundus shakes his head. His eyes are wide and frightened. 

"We'll look after him," Honeyfoot says, voice firmer than it has any right to be. 

Childermass forces himself to look away, turns and runs through the hall to the kitchen, where floor is still gritty with soot. The garden is bright and cheerful, the blackbirds singing. Brewer raises his head as Childermass flings the stable door open. 

“Come on.” He pulls the saddle from the wall and levers it roughly onto Brewer’s back, fingers trembling on the straps. “We must go quickly.”

Brewer pricks his ears. Childermass jams his foot in the stirrups, swings himself up and gives the horse a slap with the flat of his hand. They dart forwards, leaving the stable door swinging behind them. Water gushes under the packhorse bridge that leads to the hall, and then they’re out on the road, surrounded by the purple moor. The wind makes Childermass’s eyes water. His heart is pounding, thoughts whirling. Segundus had been fine, right up until Childermass had tried to take him inside, and then…

Perhaps Honeyfoot is right – perhaps it is overexertion – but they were not out long, and they had not argued. By the holly, with the sun beating down, Childermass had almost hoped they had more time than everyone believed.  

The village church lurches into view, spire rising above the thatched cottages. Brewer twitches the sweat off his skin as Childermass slows their pace, peering left-to-right at the rows of doors. A girl with dark plaits looks up at him, eyes wide.

“Where’s the doctor’s house?”

She points down the road, past the church. Childermass tightens his hands on the reins, urges Brewer on. A dog barks on the other side of the road. 

A flash of blue – a door painted the colour of a good coat, tightly shut. Childermass pulls Brewer to a halt and slips from the saddle. "Doctor!" He takes the small gate in front of the house in a single leap and slams his fist into the neat door. “Doctor Harris!”

Nothing. Panic gnaws Childermass's insides. What if he has been called away to another village? There's no time to ride across the moor to find him, and Childermass had not thought to bring a silver dish...

A window opens at the top of the house and a thin, bald head appears. “Who wants me?”

Relief floods Childermass like water. “I’ve come from Starecross.” He points up the road. “For Mr Segundus. He-”

“I am aware of his condition – what has changed?”

“He seems worse than they have seen before – I thought he had a fever, but Honeyfoot says not. They told me to fetch you as quickly as I could.”

The doctor nods. “I will get my horse, Mr…?”

“Childermass.”

The head vanishes from the window. Childermass hurries back to the road, takes a moment to pat Brewer on the nose and clambers back into the saddle. The dog leaves off its barking and puts its head on its paws, eyeing them warily. 

A door creaks at the back of the house, and then the doctor emerges from the garden on a grey mare, his medical bag sat neatly on his lap. “Tell me everything as we ride, Mr Childermass."

The doctor gives the mare a sharp kick and they turn out onto the main road. Childermass tells the best account he can of what had happened, though he's so dazed he can barely speak. 

“Could going outside have caused it?” he murmurs. "Was I wrong?" 

The doctor frowns. “I will have to examine him, but no. A little fresh air is no bad thing in these cases, if the patient is strong enough for it.”

Childermass’s heart sinks. He grips the reins and focuses on the track ahead.

The doctor turns his head. “I do not think I have seen you around Starecross before, Mr Childermass."

“I knew Segundus and Honeyfoot before the school."

"You must be a good friend, to come at such a time." 

“I have been away. I…I did not know how bad things were until yesterday.”

“Then I am sorry. You must have had quite a shock." The doctor shakes his head. “It is a bad business – a very bad business.”

Childermass looks down at his hands. He doesn’t dare show his face. The cut on his mouth is already starting to scab, leaving a sticky mess on his lower lip. The horse’s hooves thunder in time to the blood rushing in his ears, but he has the doctor, and the packhorse bridge is in sight. They’re almost there.

Starecross’s grounds steam in the morning sun, fighting off the last of the wet night and making a low mist that swirls around the horses as they tie them near the kitchen door. Everything is too quiet. Childermass still isn’t used to the hall without the students, maids, Hannah – the only one of Norrell’s staff who consented to work in another place of magic, and who has proved herself a formidable cook.

He misses them. Starecross, the way it is now, already looks haunted.

"Honeyfoot!” Childermass makes for the hall, motioning the doctor to follow him. Specks of dust drift in the dim light. “I’ve brought the doctor! Charles!”

Lady Pole’s door opens and Honeyfoot steps through. His face is set, nightgown covered in dark spots. The doctor hurries past and goes straight for the bedroom, bag swinging over his arm. When Childermass tries to follow, Honeyfoot puts out a hand and blocks his path.

Childermass grits his teeth. “I am sorry that I did not wait for you to wake before taking Mr Segundus into the garden, but I am going to see him now. Let me past.”

Honeyfoot drops his arm but doesn’t move aside. “Mr Segundus is…he…” His voice cracks.

“What?” Childermass’s throat clenches. “What happened?”

“I could not get him to sit up. I thought…I thought he’d gone into a faint –  it happens sometimes, when he coughs very badly. I knew I had better put the bed back in order, and when I looked up, he was so still…he was not…not…”

Honeyfoot’s knees give way and Childermass reaches instinctively to catch him. They stagger to the nearest chair. Childermass’s hands are like wax, and he more drops than lowers Honeyfoot into it.

“Are you sure?” His voice is shockingly loud in the quiet house. “Are you _sure_?”

Honeyfoot says nothing. The door creaks and Doctor Harris steps into the hall, grim-faced. “I am sorry.” He wipes his hand on his sleeve. “I thought we had more time. His condition was severe, but…”

“No.” Childermass turns from the doctor to Honeyfoot, back again. “We spoke in the garden. He was tired, but I…” He steps forward. “Let me see him.”

“Sir, he-”

“I need to see!” Anger ripples under his skin, pulling the corner of his mouth into a snarl.

The doctor steps aside and Childermass shoulders past him. Lady Pole’s room is hot and stuffy. Charles leans against the window, forehead to the glass and hands braced on the sill.

Someone has pulled a bedsheet up over Segundus’s face.

“What happened?” Childermass's voice comes out barely a whisper. Blood surges like a river in his ears, muffling the world around him.

Charles looks up. His face is grey. “I thought I heard the doctor, and when I came back…it was too late. I didn’t see.” His eyes go towards the bed and he inhales sharply. “I have to go outside.”

He turns and flees. Honeyfoot’s voice sounds briefly in the hall, falls silent.

Childermass is suddenly very aware that his breath is the only one left in the room. Segundus's fingernail marks are still white on his palm. 

"John?" he murmurs. 

The shape under the blanket doesn’t move. Childermass sways, finds the end of the bed, sits on it heavily. His skin is numb, like he’s encased in stone. The air shimmers and swims. The room is suddenly impossibly heavy, and there's a crushing pain in his chest. Everything is too still. That is not Segundus’s way. Was not. Was.

Childermass closes his eyes, tries to see Segundus like he was a year ago, flushed by the fireside and laughing, but his head is crowded with the image of him slumped over Honeyfoot’s arm on the bed, hair matted to his forehead and staring at Childermass as he turned his back. 

A cry gathers at the back of his throat. He clamps a hand over his mouth, keeping it in. 

Through the window, a good distance away, comes the crunch of feet on the garden path, followed by the off-key sound of Vinculus’s singing.


	5. Le Mat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Le Mat: The unwise man, foolishness, that which cannot be helped.

Childermass keeps vigil in Lady Pole’s room until the morning shadows are gone and Dr Harris all-but drags him out.

“I need to make my final examination,” he says, giving Childermass a sympathetic look. “Perhaps you should try and sleep – you look exhausted.”

“I am not tired.”

"Even so. This job is better done alone.”

Childermass doesn’t have the strength to argue. Segundus is dead. He doesn't know whether Childermass is here or not. 

The bed creaks as he stands up. Blood tingles back into his legs.

“I am sorry,” the doctor says quietly. “Times like this are never easy.”

Childermass hesitates. “Mr Segundus has a crucifix. He said it is not to be buried with him.” His breath catches. “Could you…that is, I cannot…”

“I understand.”

Dr Harris turns towards the bed, and the sheet rustles. Childermass closes his eyes, clenches his fists until the doctor touches his shoulder.

“Here.” The chain tickles as it tumbles through his fingers. “Is there a relative who might want it?”

Childermass looks down. The tiny cross winks in the light. “I will ask Mr Honeyfoot.”

The doctor inclines his head, leads Childermass to the door, and shuts it behind him. The hallway is empty. Childermass is not certain how long he has been sitting, but Honeyfoot is nowhere in sight. Childermass does not want to look for him, or Charles. He has no wish to face them. 

The silver chain is cold against his hand. He clenches his fist around it. Segundus had not asked him to look after it, and it might well be missed, but…

He fumbles with the catch, fastens it, and pushes the cross out of sight under his collar. He will give it to Honeyfoot before he leaves, but now is not the time. 

Exhaustion pulls at his joints, but the thought of going to bed – even of lying flat – turns his stomach. He goes outside instead, to an old wall at the very edge of the grounds. Colours sway dully around him, and his chest is cold. He moves a snail on the crumbled bricks to one side and sits on the wall, looking out over the main road towards the packhorse bridge and remembering Segundus’s smile by the ivy when he’d ridden to the hall last year. 

"The worst has happened, then.”

Childermass blinks. He’d forgotten that he’d heard Vinculus singing. He had forgotten everything, except the raised sheet and the horrible silence of Lady Pole’s room.

“How…?” 

“Would you be out here if there was anything you could do inside?” Vinculus removes his hat and holds it in front of his chest. “I am sorry."

 _So am I. _"We were not expecting it so soon."

"That is a shame." Vinculus replaces his hat. "I will go inside, I think. It is a long way from Leeds to York, and a man must eat, even in bad times. It is well after noon.”

Childermass looks up, surprised. The sky is blue and endless. “I did not realise.”

Vinculus smiles in a manner Childermass has never seen before. “Homes have a habit of twisting time. You might be there a hundred years, or a few minutes. It all feels the same.”

Childermass starts. Before he can recover himself to speak, Vinculus turns and makes for the house. 

 

*

 

Childermass spends the night in the stables, but he doesn’t sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Segundus’s fingernail marks in his palm and has to fight to keep his thoughts under his skin. By dawn he’s heavy-eyed and so tired that he keeps forgetting to breathe. Soon it will be a whole day since Segundus died, the first of hundreds and tens of hundreds. 

He goes to the house. Stepping over the threshold is easier than he expected, but the familiar smell – _home_ – makes his throat hurt.  

The kitchen is quiet. Two bottles of wine stand empty on the table. Charles is by the fire, a blanket around his shoulders. 

Childermass picks up one of the bottles, turns it over. Wine dregs patter onto the kitchen floor. “Where is everyone?”

“Mr Honeyfoot is in Lady Pole’s room, with the carpenter.” Charles looks up. His face is hollow. “I think Vinculus is in the pantry.”  

“Do you want me to fetch him out?”

“No. Let him have what he likes.”

Childermass spends the morning drifting alone through the house. No one place has any hold on him – his thoughts are horribly loud, and he cannot stay still. Twice, he finds himself in a room with no idea of how or why he came to it. 

It’s only a matter of time before his feet take him south, the familiar route to Segundus’s study.

The room is cold, but it overlooks the best of the gardens and the light is good. Everything is just as he remembers. A desk takes up most of the wall by the window, a second, lower table pushed against it. Merlin’s cage stands empty on the windowsill, door unfastened.

“Merlin comes and goes as he pleases,” Segundus had said the first time he invited Childermass to come in, a stack of papers under his arm. “He is not of the best temper, and I have never managed to train him to follow commands.”

“You are too soft on him, like you are with everyone else.”

Segundus’s face twisted indignantly. “I am not!”

"It is not a bad thing.”

Segundus glared, and though Childermass had quickly schooled his face into nonchalance, he had wanted to smile.

Childermass glances out of the window, half-expecting Merlin to be perched, waiting to be let in, but there’s nothing but the hills, the sky and the stream.

Segundus’s papers are stacked neatly – a letter to a prospective pupil, unfinished, a bill, a jotting about prophylaxis and a well-thumbed collection of Shakespeare’s tragedies, marked with a scrap of paper. His greatcoat is folded over the chair. Childermass picks it up. One of the buttons has come off and is pinned to the sleeve with a threaded needle. Segundus was no doubt intending to sew it back on. Something is stuffed in the nearest pocket. Childermass reaches for it.

An olive scarf, bought from the half-closed market after a meeting of the York Society, last November. Segundus had left his scarf at Starecross and he shivered every step back from the Starre Inn until Childermass, rolling his eyes, told him to buy one from a nearby stall.

“But I have a scarf already.” Segundus pulled his coat tighter. “It would be wasteful to get another simply because I was too absent-minded to bring it.”

Childermass snorted. “You are the master of the first school of magic in England. I should think you’re entitled to own more than one scarf.”

"I suppose...that is, the one I have is rather old.”

“That one.” Childermass pointed to the closest, deep red and warm.

“Oh no.” Segundus shook his head. Light from an upstairs window reflected on his hair. “Bright things do not suit me.” 

Childermass would have argued, but the stall-owner was watching them and it would have been ill-advised to bicker with Segundus in front of her. 

The olive scarf is slightly worn, and it smells of wood and fire smoke. He bundles it under his arm and hurries down to the kitchen. Charles is still at the fireplace, and he doesn’t look up as Childermass strides out of the door. The wind is higher than it has been in days, though it’s too warm to wear even a coat. Childermass puts the scarf on anyway. The wool is slightly worn, and it reminds him of Segundus’s hands.

“You’re a fool,” he murmurs, taking the quickest path through the gardens to the moor. The wind chills his face. The sky is still bright blue and endless.

He walks, pushing through heather and ferns until his feet chafe and his trousers are twisted with thorns and burrs - until his eyes are barely open and it gets so dark that he has to go back to the hall or risk falling.

He puts the olive scarf in his saddlebags, where nobody will look for it, and makes his way to house. A yellow light burns in Lady Pole’s room – someone is keeping vigil with the body – but the kitchen is empty. Childermass means to get something to eat and head back to the stables, but when he sits down to take a stone out of his boots exhaustion creeps up on him like fog and he drops into sleep.

He dreams of faces in the dark, reaching hands and disconcerting voices that fade into Segundus, standing in the garden last summer. This time, there are no pupils and the air is grey and cold.

"You shouldn't have left." Segundus's voice is tense. “It should have been different." 

Childermass tries to speak, but someone has put rocks in his throat.

Segundus's eyes flash, and his mouth twists into a snarl. " _Y_ _ou_  should be different!" 

Childermass wakes with a start to find Charles, red-eyed and pale, shaking his shoulder.

“What?” he mumbles. His mouth tastes like something dead. “What’s wrong?”

“We have to go to the church.” Charles swallows and his voice goes taut. “We have to bury him.”

Childermass blinks. Someone, somewhere, must have made the necessary arrangements. They can’t leave a body out in the heat, and Segundus has no relatives who need to travel to Yorkshire, but…

“When?”

“An hour. Mr Honeyfoot has gone to collect his wife and daughters, and the rest of us will walk from here to the church.”

Charles turns and flees into the garden. Childermass gets to his feet. He hasn’t eaten in two days, and the effort makes him dizzy.

The pantry is empty, though the signs of Vinculus’s presence – a half-eaten pie and a piece of cheese with a haphazard array of slices hacked from it – are clear. Childermass forces down a crust of bread, and then, when his stomach contracts and he realises that he’s ravenous, another. He hurries to the cheese and cuts a piece from it with shaking hands, but a wave of nausea closes his throat, and he has to spit it out before he vomits. How can he eat, knowing what’s to come?

He stumbles into the garden, following the laughing trickle of the stream through the flowerbeds. The chairs that he and Segundus had sat in are still there. Childermass turns his eyes from them, crouches, and throws freezing water onto his face. It runs down his neck and behind his ears. His reflection in the busy stream is haggard and distorted. 

“Come,” he growls. “You must bury him, and you must look respectable for it.”

He takes a breath, scoops up another handful of water. He scrubs under his nails, between his fingers, and wrings his shirt clean in the shallows. There's nothing to do with his hair – there never is – but he wipes his boots as best he can and picks the burrs and thorns out of his trousers.

They’re already gathering when he gets back to the house. It’s a small congregation – some members of the York Society; Hannah and two maids; those students who live close enough to come. Vinculus has buttoned his coat to hide his blue chest and concealed the holes in his hat with John’s Farthings. Charles keeps his head down, broad shoulders hunched in his best coat.

After Childermass, only Dr Harris and Miss Redruth join them. Mrs Lennox is in Bath and Arabella Strange in London, too far to make the journey. The coffin has been sent ahead by cart.

Childermass walks next to Vinculus, who hums a melancholy tune that tugs Childermass’s thoughts towards wide heaths and old forests that cling to the sides of valleys. His heart aches in his chest, and he only realises they’ve entered the churchyard when they stop. The coffin is knotted elm, and very small. Honeyfoot and his family are in black, quiet and red-eyed. Mrs Honeyfoot buries her face in a handkerchief, and the youngest daughter pulls her close. Insects hum in the wildflowers that grow around the church.

The words of the sermon blur and twist, and Childermass soon gives up trying to concentrate on them. If he listens, he has to think about how many mistakes he has made. 

Vinculus turns his hat over in his hands, the flowers going in a constant, blue circle. 

The sermon ends abruptly, and there appear to be no arrangements for afterwards. The members of the York society leave first, discussing what a great pity it is to lose a schoolmaster now, with magic returning to England at last. Miss Redruth lingers with the pupils. Hannah gives Childermass a dark look over the fresh grave, turns and strides out of the church with her head held high.

“Mr Childermass?”

Childermass starts, surprised at how much sense his own name makes, in comparison to everything else.

“May I have a word?” Honeyfoot nods to the fence at the edge of the graveyard, well away from the hole in the ground.

Childermass nods. He has no reason to refuse, and no strength to invent one.

“I wanted to apologise,” Honeyfoot says, once they’re some distance from the rest, “for what I said to you when you came back from the garden. Dr Harris insists that what happened was inevitable – nothing so small would have caused him to become any worse, and the way I spoke to you was quite unacceptable. I am most sorry for it.”

“Mr Honeyfoot-”       

“Mr Segundus was very excited to go into the grounds. You made him happy, and I am grateful for it. I am-”

“Mr Honeyfoot!” Childermass takes a breath. “It’s...I understand.”

Honeyfoot blinks, and though he doesn’t smile, exactly, his face relaxes and some of the lines around his eyes lighten. "I am glad."

Childermass shrugs stiffly. He’s more relieved than he wants to show, but the outcome still brings them here, to the quiet churchyard. "I am sorry I have been no help with the funeral."

"Most of the arrangements have been in place for weeks. I had only to bring them together." Honeyfoot sighs. "And you have had a terrible shock. I would not have expected anything of you." 

Childermass looks down at his hands. It is hard, to disappoint so many people in such a short space of time. 

"When will the school open again?” he says. It’s easier than thinking about the rest.

Honeyfoot sighs. “Not until after the harvest. A part of me wants to not open at all – the place will not be the same – but Mr Segundus loved this school, and we must go on.” He smiles sadly. “I hope that you will come and visit us more often. You are well-learned in magic, and there is much you could do for our pupils.”

Childermass says nothing. He doesn’t want to lie to Honeyfoot, and Segundus wouldn’t want him to refuse, but this place…

“You were one of his closest friends, you know.”

Childermass laughs. His voice is hoarse. “I did not visit in half a year.”

“You did not know.” Honeyfoot tightens his hands around his stick. “If I had written to you earlier, would you have come?”

Childermass hesitates. He had burned Segundus’s letters precisely for that reason – any excuse would have dragged him to Starecross like a roped horse. If he had known…

Honeyfoot inclines his head. “Then the error was mine. I should have thought to contact you before the summer.”

“No,” Childermass says sharply. “The quarrel was between Segundus and myself. You were not to know.”

“So you did…quarrel?”

“We did.” A surge of recklessness runs through Childermass like fire. “It about something very important to both of us. I could not stay with it unresolved, though it was my own fault that the situation arose.”

Honeyfoot looks thoughtful, and for a moment Childermass thinks he might have gone too far.

“Mr Segundus never said so.”

“What?”

“I asked him many times what bothered him. He said that he had made a mistake, and that you had argued.”

Childermass snorts. “He was always too kind in his measure of other people. But I cannot tell you what happened, and none of it is of any matter now.”

Honeyfoot puts a hand on Childermass’s elbow. “Mr Segundus was very pleased that you had come back.”

Childermass’s ears ring, and he looks away.

Honeyfoot glances over the graves to his wife and daughters, still huddled around the fresh-turned earth. “I must return to them. You are welcome to stay in High Petergate, if you would rather not be at the hall. There is plenty of space.”     

“No, thank you.” Childermass has no intention of staying at High Petergate, or at Starecross. Wait for Charles to go into the garden, leave a note for Honeyfoot, a few days hard riding and then…somewhere. Perhaps Scotland. There will be wide spaces there, and no memories of Segundus in them. "It is not a good time." 

“Very well. I will come to the hall tomorrow to collect some of my things and go through Mr Segundus’s papers. There is much to discuss.”

For a moment Childermass thinks Honeyfoot has seen through him, but he only smiles at him and turns to go, leaving Childermass feeling like someone has picked at his insides with a fork. 

           

*

 

Starecross is cold and empty with its dark windows and silent grounds. Childermass lets Charles and Vinculus to go inside ahead of him, then tramps through the long grass towards the stable. He feels hunched and tired from the short walk, and his knees hurt. The stream whispers around the holly bush. Childermass lets his eyes follow it east, out of the grounds and into the woods over the next hill. A gust of wind stirs his hair.

He stumbles as he crosses the stream and curses as his right foot lands directly in the water. He tries to engage his knee to step out before his boot fills entirely, but his thoughts catch on the inside of his skull and he finds that he cannot move. A quiet, numbing whisper soothes the ache in his shoulders and the silent garden is suddenly filled with a soft buzz. It is a nice sound. His thoughts have been very loud of late, and the world seems a lot better without them.

Without the idea to do so crossing his mind, Childermass turns and wades downstream. Bindweed waves white flowers as he pushes through it. He climbs the low fence at the edge of the grounds without difficulty, gripping snarled ivy, and drops onto the other side with a splash. The moor is warm. Briefly, he’s aware that the stream is getting deeper, and that he cannot swim, but it does not seem very important. Emerald moss skids under his boots. He takes them off, leaves them with his stockings on the bank.

If time passes, he does not feel it. He comes to a place where water gushes down a ravine choked with slippery rocks and pointed stone, and a voice whispers at the back of his mind to turn back, but he doesn’t want to. He can no longer remember where he came from.

He shuffles to the edge of the drop and lowers himself down, scrabbling for purchase on the moss. A pebble skids from under his left foot and he falls with a jolt, landing hard in the water. His elbow cracks against jagged stone.

Childermass frowns. Something isn’t right.

The thought hovers, slips away. He fixes his gaze on his own legs. Water ripples around around his bare feet, pushing against his toes…

He’s been going downstream all this time, and yet the current is coming _towards_ him.

Panic clamps his throat as water swells over the tops of his feet. Something flashes under the surface, twisting into a bright circle and spreading outwards like a grasping hand…

“John!” a voice hisses in his ear, at once close and far away, like Segundus is running at him impossibly fast – because it is Segundus’s voice, high and panicked. Something snaps at the back of Childermass’s mind and he staggers to his feet, stumbling out of the water and tripping, falling onto the bank. The buzzing fades into the wind that rattles in the heather.

Childermass shivers, hairs standing up on his arms and the back of his neck. He staggers to his feet.

“John?” He looks around wildly. He does not know where he is or how he got there, only that he had seen Segundus, or heard him, perhaps - that he had been _here_. The thought wriggles away from him but he must hold onto it, he must…

Pain wrenches his gut. He doubles over and vomits onto the grass.

 

*

 

“Mr Childermass!”

Charles scrabbles to his feet as Childermass steps into the kitchen, dripping water, barefoot and with his boots grasped one in each hand.

“Where have you been? Sir?” Charles touches his arm. “It’s almost dark! You’re soaking wet!”

“I went to the stream.” Childermass frowns. Magic tickles his tongue, and for a moment he tries to tell Charles where he has been – he is certain that it’s important – but the words slip away, and the next thing he knows, he’s in a chair with a dry towel over his shoulders and another wrapped around his bruised feet. Someone is touching his hair.

“What are you doing?” he growls.

“You must have hit your head.” Charles mutters. “Only I cannot find a mark.”

“I didn’t fall. I walked.” He had walked, a long way upstream. Or was it downstream? “I thought I heard someone I knew.”

Charles’s mouth twists. “We should call the doctor.”

“No.”

“I really think-”

“No!” The same man who wrapped Segundus in a sheet and said he’d thought they had more time? Childermass won’t see him. Not again. “I am tired, that’s all. I will be better in the morning.”

“I do not think you should go to sleep. You are very cold.”

“I’m fine.” He pulls the towel tighter around his shoulders. The feeling is stinging back into his fingers and toes, and his jaw aches. By the hearth, his boots start to steam.

Charles waits, but when Childermass refuses to speak, he gives in. “I’ll make up the fire for you in the east room.”

Childermass’s shoulders relax. The east room is his usual at Starecross, if there is no-one more important visiting. Sometimes even if there is.

“Thank you.”

“I have offered Vinculus a space in the house, but he has gone to the stables. I think he intends to sleep there.” Charles picks up the coal bucket and puts his hand on Childermass’s arm. “Come on.”

“In a moment.”

“Mr Childermass…”

“I will be there shortly.”

Charles sighs, leaves. Childermass stares into the fire. He should go and find Vinculus to tell him that they’re leaving in the morning, but he’s sick and confused, and his head pounds like he’s been drinking.  

Perhaps he has. That would make the most sense.

He gets up, intending to follow Charles to the east part of the house, but instead he finds himself across the hall in Lady Pole’s room for the first time in two days. Then, the room was so quiet he fancied he’d died himself, but now the linen is tidy and the bedcurtains tied neatly back, letting in the dusk light. Even when Lady Pole was at Starecross, it might have passed for a lady’s boudoir rather than a sickroom. If it weren’t for the laudanum stain on the bedside table, it might be impossible to tell what had occurred here.

His thoughts drift to Lady Pole. There have been no sightings of fairies, at least none from trustworthy sources, since Strange and Norrell vanished, but Childermass is not so closed-minded as to think they are gone. His eye goes to the candlestick on the dresser in the corner of the room. Strange had managed it, with practice, and he had not had the King’s Book.

It’s a brief thought, and a useless one. He hasn’t the skill, and Segundus would not want him to. Childermass is not in the habit of repeating mistakes, especially not those of other people.

A drop of water falls from his damp hair. Something nags at him, something important…The thought trembles, slips away.

He goes slowly back into the hall and up the stairs. One night’s rest, and then gone. It will be as if he was never here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a delay with this chapter, sorry - I've had the busiest week and just haven't been able to get the time to sit at my computer!


	6. Two of Coins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two of Coins: Confusion, difficulty, hindrance, unrest.

Childermass wakes with a start, throat tight and Segundus's voice sharp in his memory. He sits up. Segundus's room is all the way on the other side of the house, Childermass couldn’t possibly have heard him call out…

No. Segundus is dead, and the house is silent. Childermass blinks, drags himself into the waking world. It's late, but the air is sticky, even with the groan of the wind on the moor. Bedsheets are tangled around his legs, and Segundus’s crucifix is warm against his neck.

He doesn’t even try to go back to sleep. He’s too hot, and besides, the thought of waking up and remembering that Segundus is dead a second time is too much to bear.

“This is no good,” he growls. His ears buzz. “This is no bloody good.”

The dark room offers no answers. Childermass reaches for his coat where he’d flung it over the bedpost and takes out his cards. There’s nothing to be afraid of now. The worst has already happened. 

He turns ten cards out onto bedsheet, familiar edges soft against his fingertips. The first, two of coins, and the second _La Mort_. He snorts.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

The pictures blur. A lost thing, unfinished business, a path to follow, memory. The buzzing in his ears gets louder. Sweat stings under his arms. He sweeps the cards up, folds them out, gets the same pattern.

He snarls and pushes the bedsheets aside, letting the cards scatter. The window is cold against his face when he leans against it. The stream trickles silver through the grounds below. There’s something exhilarating about watching the night from inside. He could almost touch the stars, if the glass wasn’t in the way…

He squeezes his eyes shut against a wave of dizziness. When he opens them, he’s standing next to the holly bush in the garden, grass cold under his bare toes. He frowns. Had someone called his name, to bring him out in the dark? He has no reason to be here with the stars and the bees…

Bees – at night?

The thought slips away. Water touches his feet. Impressions trickle past – a ditch, an empty field, a low stone wall, and the stream dashing thirstily in front of him. He stumbles down a gorge. The thought occurs to him that he has been here before, and that this is magic, strong magic. He tries to bring a charm to his lips, but the buzzing rises up and swallows it. The air is hot, heavy with summer smells. 

_Go back, John_ , a voice hisses, very familiar and very close. Childermass blinks, and the world comes into focus. He's in front of a bank of trees, his nightgown soaking wet and his feet cut from the stream bed. The wood is small, oak and beech pale in the moonlight, but his vision blurs when he takes a step towards it, and then there is a second wood, rising impossibly high above the first. This one is dark, thorny and bristling with blue fire.

Childermass clenches his fists, wills himself not to pass out. He must be miles from Starecross, and no-one will miss him for hours, if they do at all. He needs to get out of the water now, before the forests pull him any closer…

His feet won’t obey him. If he cannot go back – and he is no longer certain exactly where he came from – then he may as well go forward. That is the sensible thing to do. Isn't it?

He wades into the cover of the trees. Black trunks as wide as carriages press around him. The blue fire, inhumanly bright, clings to branches just out of reach, but no heat comes from it. The whole forest is deathly cold. Fear rises in the back of Childermass’s throat, but he can barely swallow his own saliva. His body is frozen up from the inside, trapped in the bright flames.

The stream shrinks to a trickle, and then dries to a shallow runnel choked with rotting leaves that ooze between his toes. The air shifts next to his face. Childermass has a brief impression of something small, no larger than a moth, with skin-thin bat wings. Instinctively, before he remembers that he cannot move, he swats at it. His hand strikes the nearest tree, splitting the skin of his knuckles.

Pain, sharp and surprising. Childermass’s head spins - he remembers where he has come from, and where he is, and the words of a spell, half-remembered, fall onto his tongue. He reaches for something to bind it with, something red or made of yew...

Angry chittering rattles around the trees, and another creature, larger, darts out of the shadows. Childermass cries out, and his fingers latch onto the only thing he's brought with him, apart from his nightshirt - Segundus’s crucifix. Silver. Silver to ward against magic and silver to increase its strength, a paradox he'd argued with Segundus more than once.

The moths close in, beating against his face and hands. Childermass swipes at them, stumbles and falls against the nearest tree. He grips the crucifix. Magic and tingles in his hands, making him dizzy, but the buzzing at last fades from his hearing. The swarm parts, lifting with a confused whine. Childermass yanks his foot free of the mulch. He looks for the path back to Starecross, but the stream dried out a long time ago, and he cannot remember the way.

He chooses a direction, runs. Wings smack his forehead and chin. He jumps a tangle of roots, streaks past a bush that burns with red light. Thorns scratch his arms. A low branch looms, catches his hair in its twigs. He wrenches frees. Breath tears his lungs. He’s going deeper into the forest, but the creatures are close behind him, and there’s no other choice…

His foot catches a snarl of brambles. Childermass staggers, throws out his hands to catch himself, and the ground gives way with a sickening jerk. He snatches for a hold, misses, and skids headfirst down a muddy bank, down and down…

He slams into a tree, sending a shock of pain through his chest and shoulders. A thorn digs into his thigh. The wood is quiet - the moths haven't followed. 

Slowly, the breath comes back to his lungs. Childermass blinks, groans. There’s something in his hand, something cold and hard…

He clenches his fist around the crucifix with a gasp. He must not drop it, though he hardly knows what spell he used. It had silenced the buzzing, thrown the moths of his trail. If he cannot hold onto it, he's lost.

The chain isn’t broken. He fumbles the catch with shaking hands, cursing. His head is clearer than it has been in hours. Too clear. He’s no uninformed, wayward traveller or foolish adventurer. To let the stream take him not once, but twice…He must be out of his mind.

Then again, perhaps he is. He has not attended many funerals in his time, and none so close to magic places. His thoughts have been on other matters. 

The catch snaps closed. Childermass sits up, pressing his back against a trunk, looks around. The tree is one of many in a circle of tall, bare trunks at the edge of a clearing. A pool ripples at the centre of the glade. The light is grey and dim, though the fires burning in the distance shed some blue light.

He gets to his feet. The slope he’d fallen down is steep and wet, but his body has gored a series of natural holes on the way. Perhaps there is an easy way around it, but he doesn’t dare go into the trees to investigate. There are things in this place much older and cleverer than he is, and his luck – or his magic – will fail before long. A short climb, and then quickly away, before something finds him.

He grits his teeth, jams his foot into the turf of the slope. His boot fits easily into the mud, but his hands slip on in the wet earth. He stumbles, almost falls. The trees creak, though there’s no wind.

A stick. A good stick will give him extra purchase. He turns, searching for a suitable one at the edge of the glade. The pool ripples invitingly. 

The voice is so quiet that he almost misses it.

“Think you there was, or may be…no, might be, might be, such a man….”

Childermass freezes.

“Yet to imagine…imagine…” Breath hitches. “Come now, you know it, John, you must not fall asleep…nature wants stuff to vie…”

The voice is Segundus’s, high and soft with his upward lilt on the ends of the words. There’s a tremble in it, but it’s strong, stronger than it was two days ago, when…

When he had _died_.

“Let us start again. But, if there be, or ever were, one such, it's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff to vie strange forms with fancy…”

Childermass shakes his head. It is a well-known Faerie trick, to pluck a voice from someone’s head and use it to lure them deeper into a wood or fen. It’s a poor trap. Segundus is dead, and even if he weren’t, glade is empty.

Yet, the words stir his memory. Segundus, with his arms tight around Childermass in the vegetable garden at Starecross. _The world is so small, and so large…it is past the size of dreaming. Like an ocean, or…or a good man_.

A fairy might use a voice from Childermass’s head, even take things he remembered Segundus saying, but these are not the same words. Not quite. 

Childermass's breath rises white in front of his face. The pond ripples, a soft whisper against the fallen leaves.

Why would a fairy get it  _wrong_?

“John?”

The voice cuts off abruptly. Childermass takes a step into the glade. He doesn’t trust this place, but… He touches the scab on his lip where Segundus’s elbow had caught it in the garden. A fever, perhaps, but Honeyfoot had said Segundus was cold…

In the stream, if someone had tried to stop him – if someone had tried to take him away from that lovely, quiet buzz – he might have hit them, no matter who they were. He had heard Segundus, too – twice. And both times, Segundus had told him to _stop_.

Childermass turns a slow circle, but he can’t see anything that might be human nearby. The ground is level, without pits or holes to hide in. None of the trees have any leaves. Carefully, he edges towards the pool and peers into it. The water is clear, but he can’t see the bottom. The ripple of the water makes him dizzy and he closes his eyes, turns away.

If he’s to find the voice, it will have to be by sound.

“John? John Segundus?”

Silence, but Segundus has good reason to keep quiet. There must be a way to convince him...

He takes a deep breath. “My name is Childermass. I am looking for John Segundus, master of Starecross school. We had two first meetings – one at Hurtfew Abbey in 1807, when you came to speak to Mr Norrell about English magic, and again outside York Minster. You did not remember you had seen me before. After that, we did not meet for nearly eight years, when I told you that you must give up your plans to make a school at Starecross. Eight months ago, you tried to kiss me, and I would not let you.”

Quiet. The trees creak.

Keep trying, then.

“Your favourite colour is red, though you pretend that it is something more sensible. You like hot food for breakfast, but do not like it at supper. You are the only person who knows that I have read _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ and enjoyed it, or parts of it. And…you have been dead for two days.”

A sharp gasp, quickly stifled. Not from the pool, but from the edge of the glade to the left. Childermass steps towards it.

“I had gone to fetch the doctor. You asked me not to, and when I got back it was…it was too late. We buried you this morning. I…I do not know how you have come to be here, but I would help you if I can.” He swallows. “I am sorry, that I was not there.”

“Stop it. Whoever you are…” Segundus’s breath catches. “Just…stop it, please. I am not going anywhere. You have no reason to tease me.” 

Childermass takes another step towards the sound, though he still can’t pinpoint it. “It’s me.”

“I know that it is not.” A rustle. “I know John Childermass’s magic, and you have none!”

Childermass frowns. For a moment he almost doubts that he is who he says he is, Segundus sounds so sure. He looks down at his hands, turns them over. Under his chin, the silver crucifix catches the light.

When he cast the spell, he had wanted to hide himself from the magic that swarmed all around him. He had wanted to hide himself. 

He reaches for the chain, hesitates. Taking it off would be endlessly foolish. In a place like this, talking to a voice he can’t see…

Quickly, he pulls the catch loose, sets the crucifix down on a rock and steps back. 

Something scrabbles by the trees. “John?”

Childermass lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “Where are you?”

“Is that really you?”

“What would be the point of pretending to be John Childermass, if I was someone else?”

"You felt different a moment ago." 

“I think I used a masking spell." He looks around. Blue fire casts moving shadows in the trees, and his skin crawls. "I must put it back on.”

“Quickly. This place is…I do not know, but it will do you no good to be discovered.”

Childermass picks up the crucifix and slips it over his head. “Can you tell me where you are? What is it like?”

“It is very dark, and there is water.”  

“Water?” Childermass glances at the pool. “How deep?”

“Up to my chest. It is still, like a lake, or…or puddle. There is not much space, and…I am very cold.”

Segundus’s voice is directly in front of Childermass, from a tree with too few branches for its trunk. No leaves to hide in, and the roots feed straight into the ground – there isn’t any space underneath them.

Childermass puts his hand on the tree trunk. The bark is icy and…wet.

He smacks his palm against it. “Are you…”

A thud from the other side. “Here.”

Childermass presses his forehead against the tree. His heart twists in his throat. If this is not Segundus, if it is all some kind of cruel trick…

He cannot bury Segundus twice. He _cannot_.

“Childermass?”                                                 

“I’m here.” He steps back. The bark leaves a cold ache on his forehead. If Segundus is in there, he must be half-frozen by now. “You are inside a tree.”

“I am sorry?”

"Believe me, I wish I were wrong." 

Childermass looks around. Usually he carries a pocket blade, but not in his nightshirt, and he hasn’t seen a single piece of metal since he stepped into the forest. He runs his fingers along the trunk, searching for a weakness, a fault.

The trunk bends.

“What are you doing?” Segundus moves inside the tree.      

“Hold on.” Childermass digs his fingernails into the bark, pulls. It stretches under his grasp, like the skin on the inside of an eggshell. His arms burn, his fingers slip, and the tree snaps back into place.

“Please, you must go.” Segundus is so close now that Childermass can hear his breathing on the other side of the bark. “Get out quickly, before anything finds you. I do not know why you have been brought here, but it cannot be good.”

The last suspicion that this is some sort of trap – that this really is John Segundus – leaves Childermass’s mind. If Segundus had begged him to stay and free him, he would have been more wary.

“No.”

“You are wasting time. There is no point in you being trapped here too. If it will not open-”

“I can do it.” Childermass lifts his leg, braces his knee against the trunk and plunges his hands back into the bark. It stretches, growing thinner, more transparent. “I won't leave you here.”

“But-”

“Stand back!”

Childermass clenches his jaw, pulls until his arms scream and his fingernails threaten to tear from his skin. A hole appears in the tree bark, then a second. He snarls. Sweat stings across his lip and his vision swims, but he keeps pulling, until the two holes connect in a great tear that finally, finally gives way. Childermass staggers and falls, landing hard on his back as a great rush of freezing water pours out of the tree. The ground underneath him turns to mud. He struggles to lever himself upright, hands sinking into the earth.

A dripping hole gapes in the bark. Segundus is sprawled amongst the tree roots, shaking. His nightshirt, the same one he was wearing when Childermass carried him into the garden, is soaking wet, and his lips blue. 

Childermass scrambles forward, and, because he has to know Segundus is solid, that he’s _real,_ wraps his arms around Segundus’s shoulders.

Segundus is real. He smells of stagnant water and bark and his skin is cold, but his breath is warm and his heart is beating under his wet clothes. 

He's  _breathing_. 

“What happened?” Childermass looks around, wishing a blanket out of thin air, but none makes itself available. He takes Segundus’s hands in his own and rubs them. “How did you get here?”

“I…I do not know.” Segundus swallows. “I was in the garden, and then inside Starecross, but I knew I had to get back to the stream, and Mr Honeyfoot was…I asked for you, but you had been sent for the doctor. I could not stop coughing, I thought…I thought I was going to rip in two. Then...I do not know how I got here. I was not carried, or dragged, or if I was I do not remember. I do not think I could have walked.”

Childermass squeezes Segundus’s hands, and is relieved when Segundus squeezes back. His palms wrinkled from the water. That is good – if they were just the like Childermass remembered, he would be suspicious.

Segundus frowns. “You do not feel the same. Your magic...”

Childermass fumbles for the crucifix. “I wanted it to keep me from straying. I think it is keeping me hidden.”

“Is that my-”

“Yes.”

Segundus shivers. “Then you must have buried me, after all.”

“Later.” Childermass’s spine prickles. “We have to go – there are things in this forest I would rather not meet, and I have nothing to fight them with. I came here by enchantment.”

“In the stream.”

“Yes." He blinks. "You called my name, the first time. I heard you, in the gorge.”

“I…I do not know.” Segundus’s teeth chatter. “I saw you coming up the stream, and my only thought was that you were not safe, so I…I called out.”

“You saw me?”

“Yes…no.” Segundus frowns. “I felt you in the water. There was something with you, a…reaching of some kind…”

“A hand.” The memory comes to Childermass very suddenly, like someone has put a painting in front of him.

“Yes. I called for you to run away, and you did. But then you came again, and the second time…I could not make you listen, and then you were gone. I thought...I do not know if I am still dreaming.”

“I wish you were.” What a luxury that would be. Childermass gets to his feet, offers Segundus his hand. “We must go.”

Segundus takes Childermass’s arm, bracing himself against the tree, but his knees give way when he tries to pull himself upright and he sits down on a root with a gasp.

“Sorry. Just…give me a moment. I am so cold.”

“You are still unwell.” It crashes back to Childermass like a wave against a ship, that Segundus had nearly died two days ago. How the cold water hasn’t killed him already…

“I will manage.”

Childermass bites his lip. Perhaps Segundus is right, but he hadn’t been able to walk when they went into the garden, and there’s even less chance he’ll be able to do so now, not up the slope.

“Get on my back.”

Segundus blinks. “No. You cannot carry me all the way out of here.”

“I can.”

“But-”

“You have been trapped in a tree for two days. If there is any excuse to be carried, this is it.”

Segundus lets out a sharp jolt of laughter. “When you put it like that, it sounds quite ridiculous.”

“We can tell it as an amusing story once we are out of this place. Now, get on.”

Segundus sighs, and does as he is told. He’s as light as he was two days ago, lighter, but Childermass’s back is aching from his fall down the slope. He slips, catches himself against the ruined tree. 

Segundus wriggles, knees under Childermass’s arms and his hands around his chest. “John…”

“It’s alright.” He grits his teeth. “I can manage.”

“John, the water.”

Childermass turns. The pond is moving, rivulets slopping over into the mulch. A smell comes off it, a smell of dead things and yet…enticing. Without thinking, he takes a step towards it. 

Segundus's fingers pinch his shoulder. "What are you doing?" 

Childermass blinks, grips Segundus tighter, anchoring himself. The pond is stretching outwards, creeping across the glade towards them. He knows without being told, without thinking, that no amount of magic will protect them if he touches it.  

“Hold tight.”

He turns and runs for the slope. Segundus yelps as Childermass takes his hands from under his knees and jumps, catching hold of a root at the top of the incline. Earth crumbles, slips. Childermass claws a handful of dirt, heaves his right leg over the top of the mound. Segundus’s weight almost drags him backwards, but then his fingers find a bramble and he grasps it. For a moment they hang, halfway between up and down, and then the balance tips and he rolls forward onto flat ground, gasping.


	7. Knight of Batons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Knight of Batons: Departure, absence, flight.

“John?”

Childermass’s vision swims. Blue flames dance above his head, and he is suddenly aware of how long it has been since he has eaten, and how far he has walked.

“John! Are you alright?”

Segundus is kneeling next to him in the dirt, shaking his shoulder. Segundus is _kneeling_ \- his fingernails are digging into Childermass’s collarbone, and he’s alive. Childermass must write to Arabella Strange and ask about her experience. Perhaps there is some parallel…

“John!” 

Childermass blinks, sucks in air and sits up. “I’m alright.”

Segundus leans back with a sigh. “You frightened me. Are you hurt?”

Childermass shakes his head. He’s nothing more than cold and wet and exhausted, pressed on by magic and shock. He’s managed with worse.

The pool laps below them at the base of the slope, silver in the firelight. Childermass doesn't feel the same pull as before, but the smell coming off it remains oddly enticing, despite the undertone of rot. He digs his hands into the earth, shuffles away from the edge. 

“We have to go. I do not know if it can follow us.”

Segundus looks down at the water, shivers. “What is it?”

“Something bad.” Childermass tugs the crucifix from his neck. “Take this. It will keep you hidden.”

“We are going out of here together - it will do for us both.”

“It might not.” Childermass pushes down frustration. “I am not entirely sure what I did to it.”

Segundus, to his surprise, smiles. “That is always the best magic, you know.” He holds out a hand. “Give it to me.”

Childermass does. Segundus turns it over and then pulls sharply. The cross comes free, and Segundus hands the chain back to Childermass.

“Put it on.” He clenches his fist around the cross. “I will keep this.”

Childermass remembers Segundus’s face in the garden, and who the crucifix had belonged to, but he does as he is told. There’s no time for anything else.

“Which way did you come?” Segundus looks around them. “Do you know how to get back?”

Childermass glances into the trees. His footsteps are still visible, wide-spaced in the deep dirt. “There. They will at least take us to the stream.” He holds up a hand before Segundus can speak. "I came here by the water - it is the only way in or out of this place that I know. As long as we don’t get too close, or step into it…”

“Perhaps there is another path?”

Segundus’s voice is thin and unconvinced, and Childermass doesn’t bother to reply. He’d rather risk the stream than get lost, or worse, found.

He gets to his feet. Pain pulses at the back of his head.

Segundus frowns. “You are exhausted.”

“I am fine.”

“You cannot carry me all the way to Starecross.” He holds out a hand. “I feel quite strong.”

“If something follows us…”

“We will not get out of here at all if you do not let me help you. Please.”

Damn Segundus and his ‘please’. Childermass would take the moon out of the sky for him, if he could.

“You must lean against me. Mr Honeyfoot will have my hide if you fall.”

Segundus nods. Childermass bends and grasps Segundus’s hand, pulling him gently to his feet. The fires shift, hollowing Segundus’s cheeks with shadow. He releases Childermass’s hand, sways, and stumbles backwards, towards the drop.

Childermass catches his shoulder, steadying him. “Let me carry you. It is not far.”

“No, no.” Segundus wobbles. His breath is shallow and pained. “Put your arm under mine, and I will manage quite well.”

Childermass sighs, slips his arm around Segundus’s waist. “You must tell me if you cannot carry on. We can find somewhere to rest, especially if you think you might start coughing. If something hears us...”

“I am alright.” Segundus takes a small step. “Perhaps it is the air, but I find it easier to breathe here.”

Childermass doesn’t argue, though he's seen a sailor break his arm trying to catch a snapped line in a storm and not realise it until afterwards. The stronger Segundus feels, the better, even if it is just for the next few minutes.

He glances behind them. The water at the base of the slope is still out of sight, but his skin is uneasy, and the blue firelight is making shapes at the edges of his vision.

Time to go. They’ve lingered too long.

They move carefully through the wood, retracing the dents of what Childermass hopes are his footsteps in the trampled leaves. Progress is slow – Segundus’s lips are bloodless and he struggles to keep pace with Childermass’s longer stride, though they're going barely faster than a stroll. The trees are unforgiving, iron-blue in the weird light. Roots snare the track. Every shadow seems to follow them, but there’s no sound except their own breathing, and the crunch of dead branches and thorns. 

The wood gets darker. Segundus’s breath grows more and more ragged, but he refuses to let Childermass pick him up again, and Childermass is too tired to fight. He feels like they’ve been walking for hours, though he had not run for more than two minutes before he fell, and his footsteps are plain in front of them.

This is Faerie, though. It is not even the King’s Roads. Time is different here. The air is different.

Light flares, and Childermass blinks. There, just ahead of them, is a bush burning with red fire.

He lets out a sigh of relief. “I recognise this place.”

Segundus closes his eyes and nods. His hair is plastered to his brow with sweat.

“Watch out for the moths,” Childermass says, more to keep Segundus’s mind off how he must be feeling than for anything else. He edges around the red bush. A stump with bark sticking up from it like teeth casts a long, ugly shapes on the next set of footprints. “They swarmed me when I first came in – I do not know if they were sent, or if they are their own…being.” He shakes his head. “If you should hear buzzing, or if I should start acting strangely, you must find a way to break me out of it.”

Something cracks in the treetops. Childermass looks up, squints. Fire blazes in the tree directly above, making a long shadow on the trunk. Childermass turns his head, scanning the trees, the fire. Nothing, except…

The shadow moves.

“Is that what you saw before?” Segundus whispers. His eyes are open again, reflecting the blue light.

“No.” It’s solid, and far, far, too big. He pulls Segundus closer to him. “That’s something else.” 

The shadow moves again, creeping further down the tree. Childermass has the odd sense of being…not watched, but _sensed_ in some way. There’s no sound from above them, but he could swear that he is being smelled.

Segundus grips his shoulder. “John, I do not think I can run.”

Slowly, careful not to break the twigs under his bare feet, Childermass steps in front of Segundus. “Get on my back.”

“I will pull you down – I can find a place to hide, I-”

“Shut up.” The shadow makes a quick, darting movement. Childermass, without thinking, twists to face Segundus and picks him up, hoisting him over his left shoulder like he had in the vegetable garden and clamping his hand into the hollow of his knees. Segundus makes a noise of protest, but Childermass is already running, leaning into his own momentum. A thin shape passes above them with a hiss, and an overwhelming smell of damp fills the air. Childermass tears through the undergrowth, snagging thorns and brambles. He leaps a tangle of roots, staggers, catches himself against a trunk. Segundus’s head smacks sharply against a low-hanging branch. Childermass curses.

“Are you-”

“I am alright!” Segundus grips the folds of Childermass’s nightshirt, steadying himself. “I cannot see it following us.”

Childermass's heart hammers against his ribs as he looks around. Which way now? The shadow cannot be far behind. They’ve lost his footprints, and the trees all look the same. The sound of water beats in his ears, smothering his thoughts.

Water.

He turns and follows the sound. A rose bush with flowers the yellow of apple flesh shudders as they whip by, and then they're standing on a tangle of roots, looking down at the stream. Childermass swerves to follow its course, keeping it in sight but not daring to get too close. Something chatters angrily in the trees. Segundus slips on his shoulder, but there’s no time to haul him up again…

Light pierces the wood ahead of them – the sun, bright and clean. Iron trunks give way to beeches and oaks, two woods on top of each other that make him dizzy. The water turns from a trickle to a gush, and then the trees fall away completely into the open moor. Childermass’s feet touch grass - scrubby, English grass that refuses to completely dry. Segundus lets out a wordless shout of relief.

Childermass twists, intending to take them well away from the stream, but he misjudges Segundus’s weight against his shoulder, stumbles. His foot catches a dip in the earth, and his ankle turns with a sickening jerk. He throws out his right arm to catch them, but he’s going too fast to stop. Segundus spills from his grasp with a cry, the air heaves with magic, and Childermass’s head cracks against a something hard. The world spins, darkens.

When he blinks his sight clear, he’s lying on his back by the water, looking up at the dawn. He sits up sharply. Pain clenches his shoulder and his ankle throbs. Beech and oak trees sway in front of him. The fires are out, and the forest has shrunk to its usual size.

“John?” He looks around, alarmed. Segundus can’t have fallen far from him, and if he has not said anything before now then he must be badly hurt…

Segundus is nowhere in sight. 

Childermass staggers to his feet. His ankle twinges, but he can put his weight on it without trouble. He hadn’t been unconscious for more than a few seconds, if he had been at all. Segundus can barely walk – even if he’s gone for help, he cannot have moved so quickly as to be out of sight. 

“Hello?”

The wind cuts through him, stripping the last of the warmth from his hands and face. No-one answers.

Childermass takes a few steps towards the wood. Surely Segundus would not have gone back into it willingly, but if he had fallen in the stream, if he had been _taken_ somehow, then…

Then Childermass must go after him.

He squares his shoulders, steps forward, and lets the trees swallow him. No fires spring up. No giant trunks press down on him. Beech bark glistens silver in the dawn. The wood smells different, of cool air and twigs, fresh. There are no leaves on the floor. It is August, Childermass remembers – they won’t fall for weeks.

“John?”

He waits, receives no reply, and steps deeper into the trees. He’s very calm, all of a sudden. Something will show itself if he makes enough noise - Segundus, or something that might lead him to the place he was before. He has only to wait.

The stream trickles innocently a few feet away from him, with no sign of drying out.

Childermass walks until golden light breaks through the trees, and he finds himself standing in the open again, looking at the brown hills to the east. He glances back. The patch of English forest is tiny, no more than a bank of trees around the stream. He can see all the way to the other side, the way he came. There is nothing that might suggest a larger wood within it, one that has left his hands bloody and his knees aching.

The stream bubbles close to his feet. Childermass looks down, and then, against, all caution, steps into it. He fumbles for the silver chain, pulls it over his head and tosses it away. It hits an oak, lands with a soft thud.

“Come on.” He spreads his hands. “I am here!”

Silence. Panic puts its fingers to his chest, and he turns runs through the water, back into the centre of the beeches. Water splashes up to his knees. The wood refuses to change - whatever it was, is, it will no longer let him see.

Well, let it try and stop him for long. He has the King’s Book. There will be a way to open the path again, and then…

He stumbles on a mossy rock, loses his footing and slams to his knees in the water. The fall knocks the air out of him, and he is suddenly aware of how tired he is, the catch of breath at the back of his throat. Freezing water seeps through his nightshirt.

“Mr Childermass!” 

He looks up. Charles is stumbling over the bank of the stream, lantern raised.

“Thank God I have found you. You must have been sleepwalking – the shutters were banging in your room, and when I called your name, you did not answer. I saw your footprints in the garden, and I thought…” Charles puts a hand on his elbow. “Quickly, we must get you inside, before you catch your death. Can you walk?”

Childermass blinks. Charles is blurry in the lantern-light, like he does not truly exist.

“Come on,” Charles says soothingly, half-dragging to his feet and out of the water. “You’re freezing cold.”

“Did you see him?”

“Who?”

“Segundus. If he went back to the hall, you must have…you must have crossed paths.” 

Charles takes hold of Childermass’s shoulders and shakes them. “Are you awake?”

Childermass swats him away. “Did you see him?”

Charles’s lips go tight. “Mr Segundus is dead, sir.”        

Childermass blinks. Of course, that is what Charles believes, and there is no way to convince him, not with Segundus gone…

“Mr Childermass, you have hurt your head.” Charles sighs. “We must go back to the hall so you can rest.”

Childermass touches his temple. A graze, sticky with blood. Perhaps…

No. He knows his own mind, and the fuzz of magic is still about him like mist.

He looks out over the hills. There’s only one way to convince Charles, and Honeyfoot – he will need their help if he is to open the way back to the wood. It will take time, and Segundus may not have much left.

“How far is the church from here?”

“You must come back to Starecross.” Charles grabs his arm. “Please, you are not well.”

Childermass pushes him back. The lantern swings wildly. “How far?”

“It is at least a mile, you cannot-"

“Do you know the way from here?”

“Mr Childermass…”

“ _Please_.”

Charles hesitates, sighs. “Upstream for a half-mile. From there we can get to the main road.”

“Leave the lantern. It will only slow us down.”

“But-”

“I said leave it!” His bare feet are sore, and the rising sun throws long shadows on the ground that make his vision flicker. He takes one step, then another. “Hurry up, or I will leave you behind.”

Childermass is too exhausted to run but he pushes his legs to their full stretch, forcing Charles to jog to keep up with him. Perhaps the cards will shed some light on where to start looking, once he gets back to the hall. There is Arabella Strange, too. His letter will have to be carefully worded, if he is to get her help – Lady Pole is none too fond of Childermass, and the two are close – but she has a good heart and an aversion to Faerie that he is certain will bring her help.

Charles turns them north a half-mile up the stream. Childermass’s legs are like lead, but he ignores Charles’s worried tuts and sighs. They cannot lose any more time. If he had not been so stupid as to trip, if he had not dropped Segundus…

His foot goes into a rabbit hole and he falls with a sharp jolt. His knees are cut and bleeding, though he's not certain when it happened. He pushes himself to his feet before Charles can get hold of him.

Starecross village is still asleep, windows dark. The church spire looms black in the sunrise. Childermass stumbles into to the low fence that runs around the graveyard, swings his right leg over it and lands heavily on the other side. Slabs and stones make shadowy figures in the long grass.

Charles’s footsteps come to a halt beside him. “What are we doing here?”

Childermass shoulders past him, tracing the path through the stones to the fresh-turned grave still topped with Mrs Honeyfoot’s yellow St John's-wort. It looks just the like he’d left it – was it only a day ago? - but he knows that it's not. It can't be. 

At the very edge of the graveyard is a half-dug plot with a spade resting in the hole. Childermass tugs it out of the dirt with a scrape.

Charles’s eyes widen. “Mr Childermass, you cannot…”

Childermass sets his jaw. He doesn’t want to, but he must. There's no other way to prove what has passed. 

“You aren’t well.” Charles tries to take his arm, but Childermass slips past him. “We should go back to Starecross. Nobody need know that we were here.”

Childermass plunges the spade into Segundus’s grave. The new dirt crumbles easily. He flings the spadeful aside, then another. Charles shoulders against him, trying to take the spade, but Childermass shakes him off, once, twice. Charles doesn't try a third time. 

Slowly, the hole widens. Blood whispers Childermass's his ears. 

The boom of a fist on wood rings out in the quiet graveyard. Childermass looks up. Charles is banging on the church door, shouting.

“Help!” He turns to look at Childermass. “Someone! Quickly!” 

Childermass looks back down at the grave, drags out more earth. His shoulders burn. He must hurry, before they stop him, but the hole is barely as deep as his forearm, and dry dirt keeps falling back into it.

The church door creaks. Childermass digs faster, and then Charles is at his shoulder, pulling on his arm. Childermass twists loose, but a man in a dark coat and hat - a new man, holding a lantern - kicks him sharply in the knee. He drops to all fours with a gasp. The spade clatters out of reach.

“Please stop!” Charles crouches next to him. “I am sorry, but I cannot let you do this – you will not forgive yourself.”

Childermass wills himself to speak, to explain, but his voice comes out a croak. Charles starts to drag him backwards, away from the grave.      

He kicks out. Charles lets out an _oof_ and his grip slackens. Childermass stumbles forward and plunges his fist into the churned earth. Something dizzying passes through his head and into his fingertips. The air vanishes from his lungs. Charles yelps in surprise.

Childermass opens his eyes. The dirt in the grave is gone. Not moved, not caved in, but…gone. He gasps for air as his vision narrows to a tunnel of grey light, then lurches forward, past Charles’s reaching arm, straight into the hole.

The coffin shudders as he lands. Childermass scrabbles at the seam, lifts. The nails are firmly in. He curses, presses his knuckles to them. Iron dissipates under his touch, shimmering into nothing. He digs his fingers into the wood, lifts, but his own weight holds the lid down. Dirt trickles into his hair. Charles it at the edge of the hole, getting ready to lower himself down...

Childermass snarls, punches the coffin once, twice. It cracks. He finds splinters, rips upward. Charles will see – he will have to understand…

The top of a head comes into sight through the split wood, a head with dark hair. Segundus’s face is turned to the left, eyes closed.

Boots thud, and the coffin shakes. Charles grabs his shoulder, but not before Childermass has got a hand to Segundus’s cheek. It's freezing cold. 

“What have you done?” Charles growls, wrenching Childermass to his feet and pushing him back into the wall of the grave. “What the hell have you _done_?”

Childermass opens his mouth, but no words come out. This is wrong. Segundus is in Faerie – the coffin should be empty. That is the proof, proof that he had not dreamt the whole thing, that he is not mad…

That Segundus is not dead.

His ears hum. Charles’s face is too close, shouting something he can’t hear. He blinks, and when he opens his eyes he cannot see anything but grey.

The world slips sideways and down, into nothing.


	8. Eight of Batons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eight of Batons: Doubt, agitation, misunderstanding.

Segundus is sitting at the end of Childermass’s bed in the east room, his old grey dressing-gown drawn tight around his shoulders. The air is dark and strange, and brambles twist on the walls, stretching through the ceiling and into the sky. Moonlight catches Segundus's hair, turning it silver. Childermass reaches out to touch him, but he misses, somehow – his hand goes straight through Segundus, and then the bed gives way underneath him and he sinks through Starecross’s foundations and into the earth. 

He sleeps deeply. Once, he hears Segundus’s voice, murmuring words that slip and slur and tangle his thoughts – _nature wants stuff to vie strange forms with fancy_  – but then, for a long time, there is only silence.

When he wakes, his skin so heavy that it pins him down to the mattress and he has to fight to open his eyes. The canopy above his head is blue and familiar. Starecross. He frowns. He was so certain that he was somewhere else, a dark place where trees burned with fire and shadows that…that…

He gasps and tries to sit up, but his head spins and he flops sideways on the pillow. The east room comes into focus. The wardrobe is ajar, a blanket folded over a chair at the foot of the bed. Sun streams through the open shutters, illuminating Honeyfoot by the window.         

“Mr Childermass!” Honeyfoot hurries to the bed, almost tripping over the chair. “Mr Childermass, you are awake!”

Childermass supposes he must be, though he is not certain how much he likes it. Someone is hitting a hammer against the underside of his skull and his tongue is dry as dirt.

His thoughts nudge him – something important, something about John Segundus…

“Did you see him?” His voice cracks. “He said…he said…” He frowns. “‘Nature wants stuff to vie strange forms with fancy’.”

Honeyfoot’s round face crinkles with worry. He reaches for a cup on the bedside, approaches the bed cautiously, and puts it to Childermass’s lips. Childermass swallows the water instinctively.

“You have been ill, sir, very ill.” Honeyfoot sets the cup down. “We have not been able to rouse you for two days. The doctor cannot not make sense of it, but Charles said…do you remember what happened?”

Childermass frowns. His left shoulder hurts, and his knees sting. There’s dirt under his fingernails, more so than usual. Had he fallen in the garden? He doesn’t remember using a ladder. In fact, he doesn’t remember how he got to be at Starecross at all…

It hits him very suddenly – the funeral and the stream and the blue wood. Segundus’s thin voice in the shadows, and the short dash to the church where he had…where Segundus had…

By God, what has he done?

Honeyfoot bobs anxiously. “Mr Childermass?”

Childermass squeezes his eyes shut. His chest is caving in on itself, heart beating too fast. He must have been dreaming for days and days, to dig up Segundus’s grave…but he had been so sure, he had thought…

He was too late. It was all too late – whether Segundus was ever alive or whether Childermass imagined the whole thing, he is dead now.

“Mr Childermass? Are you asleep?”

The floorboards squeak, and Honeyfoot touches his shoulder. Childermass keeps his mouth shut, holding himself stiffly against the mattress. He can’t look Honeyfoot in the face, can’t explain what he has done. He can barely breathe. Why is Honeyfoot being so kind, when Childermass has done such a terrible thing? 

Footsteps patter in the corridor, and the door creaks.

“Is he…” The voice breaks off, breathless. “Is he awake?”

Childermass’s forehead wrinkles, despite himself. That sounds like…

Honeyfoot’s hand leaves his shoulder. “He was awake, briefly, but he said very little. I think he may still be ill. The magic he did must have taken a great deal out of him.”

A soft noise. “I only hoped…perhaps there is something I can do to help.”

That is Segundus’s voice.

“You must rest.” Honeyfoot moves away from the bed. “You are far from well yourself.”

The chair scrapes at the foot of the bed. “I will sit with him. Perhaps he will wake up again. Besides, the light is better here in the mornings.”

Honeyfoot sighs. “Shall I bring you some eggs?”

“No, thank you. I am alright.”

The door shuts with a click. Honeyfoot’s steps recede along the corridor and down the stairs.

Childermass opens one eye. At the angle he is lying, he cannot see anything but the blue bedcurtains, but there is someone else in the room, breathing.

He sits up, hands trembling against the mattress. Segundus is perched in a straight-backed chair at the foot of the bed, a blanket around his shoulders and his face towards the sunlight.

“John?” Childermass’s arms give way and he falls back onto the bed with a thump. Lights pop in front of his eyes.

“Careful.” Segundus’s voice has a note of alarm, but it seems to come from a long distance. “You have been asleep for a long time.”

“Honeyfoot…” Childermass blinks as the bed dips, and Segundus’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder. “He spoke to you, but you were…we were…”

“I am here.”

“No. No, I could not find you – you were taken back, but when I opened the coffin…” His head spins, and he loses his train of thought. The ceiling is breaking apart above his head, stretching and thinning. “You were  _cold_.”

“A grave is a cold place to be.” Segundus’s voice cuts through the air towards him. “I am alright, John. I am quite well. I was breathing when you found me, though I think you were rather too distressed to notice.”

Childermass barely hears him. He inhales, and something rushes in with the air, filling the space around his heart and lungs.

Segundus is  _alive_.

He laughs, but it catches in the back of his throat and turns into a cough.

“Please be careful. You are not well.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are not. You have suffered a blow to the head, not to mention the rest.”

Childermass touches his temple. The scab is larger than he expected – it must have bled badly, though he hadn’t noticed at the time. He looks up. Segundus's face is close to his own, a gentle frown wrinkling the skin above his nose. There's a small graze on his forehead, and another on his cheek, and he looks tired, but his eyes are bright and alert. A strand of hair has come in front of his ear, a neat spiral. Childermass wants to reach out and touch it. 

He searches out Segundus’s hand on his shoulder instead, presses it. It feels real. Everything seems real, right down to the tiny hole in the bed curtains that has been there since he started using the room to the way Segundus is looking at him, with his usual, bird-like concern. 

“I couldn’t find you by the stream.” He swallows the dryness at the back of his throat. "What happened?"

Segundus shakes his head. “I hardly know. I remember us falling, and there was a great pulling at my back, like I was drowning. When I came to myself, Charles had lifted me out of my own grave and you were…you would not wake up. I still had this in my hand.” He reaches into his pocket and sets the tiny silver cross down on the bedside table. “Perhaps that is why…I do not know.”

Childermass reaches out and touches it. The metal is dull under his fingers, slightly warm from Segundus’s pocket. Whatever spell might have been on it, it is gone now.

“Is that all you remember?”

“You should rest.” Segundus pulls his hand away, picks up the water on the bedside. “There will be time to talk later.”

“Please.” Childermass pushes the cup away. He will not rest until he knows, until he  _understands._

Segundus catches his eye, sighs. "I do not have any answers. Mr Honeyfoot has not allowed me any books in case I tire myself out." He turns on the bed, widening the space between them. “I still do not know how I came to be in the wood, or why you were brought there. We did not even come by the same path." 

Childermass rubs a hand over his face. The last few hours of what he remembers are blurred, like a dream. “In the vegetable garden, you fought me to get back to the stream. Did you hear buzzing?”

“Buzzing?”

“Magic like…like a swarm of bees.”

“I do not remember.”

“I think the stream tried to take you the same way it did me, but you died before it could.”

Segundus’s face twists, showing the whites of his eyes. “I assumed – some enchantment…”

“No.” Childermass levers himself upright. There’s a fierceness running through him that compels him to speak, to explain, though he’s so tired that his chest hurts when he breathes. “You were taken afterwards. I kept vigil the first night, but..." Something tugs in his memory - rain on the roof of his room at Hanover Square, and a letter that wasn't his to open. "It is like Mr Strange’s spell in the Peninsula.”

Segundus frowns. “What spell?”

“A letter I intercepted for Norrell – do not look at me like that, it was my job – when he was in Spain. It was from a Major Grant to a friend in…in Weymouth, and it mentioned magic Strange did to rescue him from the French.” 

He closes his eyes. Rain on the roof, ink on his fingertips, a candle lit to reseal the wax after he had finished…  

_…the quite remarkable thing is that the enemy will have had no notion that magic took place until the doll touched the ground, which, of course, it cannot have done until the march halted. I enquired of Mr Strange whether the exchange might be detected beforehand – for example, if one of the officers should address the doll, believing it to be me – but I confess he seemed rather uncertain of the details. Nevertheless, I owe him a great debt. He is a fine gentleman, particularly fond of hard-boiled eggs, and able to smile despite the difficulties of the war…_

Norrell had not been pleased with the letter – the magic Strange had used was not black, per-se, but it had a wildness about it that he disapproved of. In fact, it was clear that in the Peninsula Strange often adapted magic of ‘questionable origins’, as Norrell would insist, or of Faerie, as Childermass would think privately. There were key differences, yes, missing parts and hidden purposes, but all magic comes from somewhere.

“John?” Segundus’s hand touches his elbow. “Are you asleep?”

Childermass starts, opens his eyes. “A spell to exchange a person with a copy – the ruse was not discovered until Grant touched the ground, and you…but no, you touched the ground when I took you out of the tree.”

Segundus frowns. “Not English ground.”

“What?”

“I stood in Faerie, but I did not touch English soil until we fell.”

"And when the spell was broken, you were returned to the last place you had been on -  _in_ - English soil." Childermass feels a thrill of triumph. “I always suspected a similar thing happened to Mrs Strange – they said her coffin was full of wood, and I doubt even Strange discovered the full truth of it. Though I think Mrs Strange did not pass away before she was taken, and I cannot understand how a fairy would have done any exchange  _after_  you had died without having some sort of connection, or consent…” 

Segundus makes a soft noise. He looks pale and sick.

“Are you alright?” Childermass says, concerned.

“Yes. It is just…I had not realised I had been truly dead.” Segundus clenches his fists. “It makes me wonder if I am quite whole.”

Childermass’s lungs constrict. He had forgotten, for a moment, what had caused Segundus to die in the first place. He had been so unsteady the forest, and still so thin, and Childermass had had no time to think about what the future might hold. 

“How are you feeling?” he murmurs. “Are you any worse?”

Segundus frowns. “What?”

“You said the doctor saw you.”

Segundus makes a motion like he is going to put his hand over Childermass’s, but he seems to think better of it. “Listen.”

Segundus breathes. Childermass winces, expecting the wet rattle at the back of his throat, but Segundus keeps inhaling, longer than anyone the condition he was in a few days ago has any right to. He breaks off with a cough, but it is only one, and dry.

“Charles and Mr Honeyfoot called Dr Harris – to you, of course, but afterwards, he insisted on seeing me. He was concerned that our experience might have caused more damage. I suppose it would have, if I had still been alive when I was taken. It makes a deal more sense now.”

“Does that mean you are…?”

“I was not able to stand for the first few hours, but in the morning…I had slept the entire night, and I had not coughed once. Dr Harris says that my lungs are as good as any man’s. Well…most.”

“Most?”

Segundus looks down. “I…I will not be quite the same. I must be very careful – I should not allow myself to out in the rain, especially if it is cold, or exercise too vigorously, and to eat plenty of warm food. But...I walked from my room to this one unassisted this morning. I have an appetite, for the first time in months. I am hungry all of the time.” He flushes. “I suppose this all sounds very foolish.”

“No.” A grin spreads over Childermass’s face, one he has not worn in a long time. “It is quite understandable." 

“I am sorry. I should have said so from the beginning, but I thought you had already understood it, in the forest, or…” He shrugs. “I do not know. You always seem to recognise more about magic than you should.”

“Not this magic.” He narrows his eyes. “You are not made to visit Faerie at night and dance?”

“Not that I am aware of.” Segundus bites his lip. “We will have to investigate this forest, the stream, warn any travellers on the road. If something has...awakened, for want of a better word, then this will happen again, and I cannot have the pupils in danger. Those  _things_  in the wood…there was more than one evil intention in that place. I do not understand why I am not still ill. Nothing in there wanted to help me.”

“Clearly, you were no use to whatever lived there dead.” The words hurt more than Childermass expects – just because Segundus is alive now, alive and  _well_ , does not mean he did not die a few days ago, that Childermass did not sit in Lady Pole’s room all day and found he had no strength to move. “It needed you alive, and it made it so. It is not the first time.”

“But why?”

Childermass shakes his head. A fairy might spirit someone away to put them to work, or because they took a fancy to them, but Segundus was hardly doing anything of use in a tree. Childermass doubts that his own fate would have been much different, if he had not managed to break out of the enchantment. 

His head twinges, scattering his thoughts. 

“And why wait until I was in no fit state to walk?” Segundus carries on, the frown deepening between his eyes. “That stream has run through Starecross for years. The students pass by it all the time – you and I, Mr Honeyfoot, Charles, the maids, Hannah…why now?”

The throbbing in Childermass’s head peaks and he winces.

Segundus falls quiet. “I am sorry. I did not mean to overtax you.”

“I’m alright.”

Segundus huffs in disbelief. “You have been asleep for a long time.”

“Honeyfoot said…two days.”

“Nearly two and a half. Vinculus has been quite a challenge without you to keep him in check.” Segundus shifts closer on the bed. “For a time, we were afraid you would not wake – all I could think was how tired I was, after I mended Lady Pole’s finger, and how much more you had done for me. Vinculus would only say that you would recover, or not, and that none of us, nor anything in the north had any say over it. He was quite infuriating.”

“I will be fine. I’m not so old yet.”  

Segundus smiles. He is still very thin, and there are dark lines of exhaustion under his eyes, but it is a real smile. “It was a brave rescue – worthy of a story.”

Childermass snorts. “A rescuer doesn’t usually drop the one he’s rescuing, at least not in the stories.”

“Nevertheless. I do not know what might have become of me if you had not arrived…I think…I think it would have killed me, eventually. Half of time, I was sure I was already dead.” The smile slips from his face. “I suppose that I was right.”

Childermass reaches for Segundus’s hand, still outstretched on the blankets. His skin is papery, but warm. “You are alive.” The smile on his face spreads. He is going to burst soon, like a dandelion clock in late summer. His blood is running close under his skin, feverish. “You are  _well_.”

Segundus colours from his neck through to the tips of his ears. He opens his mouth, but something clatters in the corridor and he jumps. Childermass pulls his hand away with a jolt, hiding it under the bedsheet. Someone – Charles – curses under his breath. Footsteps sound against the planks, then vanish down the stairs.

Childermass remembers to breathe.

Segundus turns back to the bed. “He did not hear anything. He has been as concerned about you these last few days as any of us, and he would have come in.”            

Segundus returns his hand to the sheets. Childermass clears his throat, keeps his arms firmly at his sides. He had almost forgotten himself – forgotten that Segundus has a reputation, and pupils who will return to the school very shortly, and that he now has the opportunity to teach them until he is a great deal greyer than he is at the moment.

The silence stretches, becomes tense.

“My apologies, Mr Childermass. I have tired you.” Segundus withdraws his hand, scoops the silver cross from the table, and gets to his feet. His lips are thin, eyes steely. “I will find Mr Honeyfoot and ask him to bring the doctor. You have been too long without him.”

“Wait-”

Segundus doesn’t wait. He strides to the door, pulls it open and slams it behind him.

Childermass bites his lip to stop himself calling after him. It will only invite trouble if he does. He must remain firm, even if he can still almost feel Segundus in his arms in the wood, the fierce longing to keep holding him and not let go. Even though he can remember the crushing terror of stepping into Lady Pole’s room and seeing the sheet pulled up over the bed.

He takes a breath, pushing the thoughts away. This isn’t a ship sailing around the Spanish coast. It isn’t even London. This is Yorkshire, and a school, and Segundus has too much to lose. Childermass isn’t bloody worth it. Segundus will understand that, with time, and Childermass must let him. It's no different to the place they were in in December, and he should be grateful for it. It means that Segundus is well, and that is more than any of them could have hoped for.

The scab on his lip is tender under his teeth. Childermass bites down on it harder, letting the pain spread into his jaw, but his thoughts refuse to let him sleep.  

                           

*

 

Dr Harris declares Childermass out of danger, but insists that he remains in bed until the next morning. Childermass does so reluctantly – his head hurts too much for reading, and the position of the room means he cannot even look out of the window. The room is still tense with Segundus’s quiet anger. Childermass's eyes sting dangerously for a time, but he presses the heel of his hands into them until he sees stars and the feeling passes. Thankfully, he has no visitors during the period, though Charles puts his head in the room soon after the doctor leaves and asks briefly how he is doing. 

The hours pass slowly. Childermass counts the threads in the blue curtains. The light coming through the window turns liquid as the afternoon begins to fade.

Once, his resolve fails him and he tries to get out of bed, to find Segundus and  _explain_ , but his legs don’t support him and he falls back down on the mattress with a sigh. Perhaps his body knows better than his mind what a mistake it would be, to go see Segundus now.

He drags the covers up to his chin, clenches his jaw until his teeth creak, and tries, without success, to sleep.

Honeyfoot brings soup in the early evening, but Childermass barely manages a few spoonfuls before he gives up, and Honeyfoot’s chatter does nothing to improve his headache, or his temper.

“We have put out that everyone is to keep away from the stream and the wood,” Honeyfoot says as he bustles around the room, tidying sheets and opening and shutting drawers with irritating frequency. “We sent a messenger for Mr Hadley-Bright – he has been in York the past week studying the Minster – and he went with Charles to inspect it, but they found nothing amiss. Still, we cannot be too careful. The last time an English subject was released from a fairy enchantment, we might have suffered dire consequences.”

Childermass frowns, remembering feathers and smashed glass in the hall downstairs. “Nothing has happened, has it?”

“Not yet, but Mr Hadley-Bright intends to go back to the wood as soon as you are well and have you go through what you saw and where, in case he has missed something.”

Childermass would like to say that he might not wish to return to the forest, and he would rather Hadley-Bright did not make such decisions for him, but he doesn’t have the strength to argue. 

Honeyfoot sighs. “You are tired, Mr Childermass.” He picks up the half-empty soup bowl. “Get some sleep – the rest of us are quite a match for anything that might happen.”

“I have been asleep for two days.”

“And you will need more before you are yourself.”

Childermass groans. Even as he fights it, his eyes are growing heavy. It is the pattern in the curtain, drawing him through its embroidered lines like a maze. “Mr Segundus…”

“I am sure he will visit in the morning.”

Childermass blinks slowly. He wants to ask Honeyfoot to bring Segundus to see him, but that would be very unwise.

The pattern on the bedcurtains swims. He is vaguely aware of someone leaving the room, and then nothing.

 

*

 

Childermass wakes with a start. Someone is close to his head in the darkness, and his skin prickles at the thought of a shadow on the tree, its slow, sniffing crawl towards them…

He stretches out a hand for a weapon, groping blindly. Heat sears his fingers and he draws back with a start.  

“Careful, Reader,” Vinculus drawls.

Childermass opens his eyes. The candle on the bedside is lit, casting sickly yellow onto the bedcurtains, and Vinculus is watching it with a look not quite of this world.

“What do you want?” Childermass mutters. His throat is dry and scratchy.

“I came to see how you were.” Vinculus pulls up the chair at the base of the bed and sits in it, propping his feet up on the mattress. “You have been asleep for a good long while.”

“Perhaps I need more, and you should not be interrupting it.”

“Ah, you will have plenty of time for that. I do not intend to be here for long – it is a fine summer, and I am not suited to being inside.”

Childermass huffs. “You aren’t suited for bloody anywhere.”

Vinculus laughs, baring his yellow teeth. “That was some interesting magic you did. Certainly, you did not get it from my pages.”

Childermass looks down at his fingernails, still encrusted with dirt. He barely remembers what magic he had done, what spells he might have combined to achieve the effect of vanishing earth into thin air.

“I do not think I could repeat it.”

“No, I do not think so either.” Vinculus crosses his ankles on the mattress. “Faerie woods may be in the habit of bouncing in and out of existence these days, but I would hope you would not allow yourself to be drawn into them a second time.”

Childermass narrows his eyes. He gets the distinct feeling that Vinculus knows something that he is not telling.

Vinculus catches his look, smirks. “If I knew anything that might help you, I would say. I have no wish to lose my only Reader, even if he is a pain in my-”

“Thank you.” Childermass holds up a hand. “And it is not so unreasonable to insist that you remain sober at breakfast. Or fully clothed when dining in company.”

“It depends on the company.”

Childermass rolls his eyes. Arguing with Vinculus is hard enough at the best of times, and he is tired.

“You have not asked after the other magician,” Vinculus says, looking up at the ceiling. “The one who was dead two days ago.”

“Mr Segundus? Why?”

“Did he not visit you earlier?”

“Yes.”

“And you discussed your escape, I imagine? The state of his heath? Magical theory?”

“In a sense.”

“Is that all?”

Childermass’s skin prickles. “What do you mean?”      

“Nothing at all.” Vinculus composes his features into what might be an attempt at innocence, but is rather too sinister. “Only, for a man who spent his morning discussing theories of magic and his own miraculously good health, he is walking around with a countenance like a winter storm. Why, he snapped at me earlier.”

Childermass blinks. Segundus snaps at no-one, except Childermass – Vinculus, he has always regarded as a guest, if a rather trying one.

“What were you doing?”

“I was…investigating the pantry. They have had problems with mice, you know.”

“You were taking the cheese.”

“Perhaps I was.” Vinculus shrugs. “I have taken cheese before. He has never minded it.”

“He minds it to me.”

“Well, this time he gave me such a look I thought he might throw me bodily from the room.”

“Mr Segundus?” Childermass shakes his head. “You must have misread him.”

“I do not misread people.” Vinculus gets to his feet and kicks the chair back to the window. “Not even the ones that have recently come back from the dead. So, being the good guest that I am, I thought I would let you know that whatever  _theories_  you have been discussing, you would do well to re-discuss them so that the rest of us might go about the pantry without fear of our lives.”

Childermass tries to protest, to come up with some excuse, but Vinculus is already at the door, humming the tune of  _Fair Susan_  with a gusto that drowns out his words.


	9. Three of Swords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three of Swords: Discord, separation, betrayal, avoiding resolution.

The morning finds Childermass with new strength, eating bacon and boiled eggs opposite Honeyfoot whilst Hadley-Bright leans against the kitchen hearth, a book in one hand and a piece of toast in the other.

“It must be today. We have delayed too long already.” Hadley-Bright turns a page with an idle flick.

“Mr Segundus has a theory that the wood has closed to England," Honeyfoot says. "He has been looking into a road near Shrewsbury which was suddenly found to end in a large bramble patch, which it had no right doing, seeing as it had never been that way before. Apparently, a farmer vanished into it last month and the road shut after him, so they could not get him out again.”

Hadley-Bright takes another bite of toast. “I am not certain it is the same thing.”

“But the magic in England is not yet settled.” Honeyfoot pauses to wipe his mouth on a cloth. “We have been collecting evidence on the roads this past year, and not all of them have stayed in the same place. There have been instances where it is likely they only had a weak hold on England.”

Childermass hums in acknowledgement. It is quite possible that when he removed Segundus from the wood, he also removed something that it needed. Or perhaps it had decided they simply weren't worth the effort. 

“It may just be biding its time," Hadley-Bright says, wagging his toast. 

Childermass rolls his eyes. “I think that if we were to have any magical vengeance wreaked on us, it would have happened by now.”

“Nevertheless. We should not be careless.”

Honeyfoot looks between the two of them, then quickly pushes back his chair. “Excuse me – I have some letters to attend to. I wish you luck for this morning.”

“Thank you.” Hadley-Bright chews the last of his toast, swallows. “I will fetch Mr Segundus. The fresh air will do him good.”

Hadley-Bright sets his book on the table, strides from the room. Childermass goes quickly back to his boiled eggs. He feels as if he hasn’t eaten for a week – which is not far from the truth – and he doubts that Hadley-Bright will allow him to finish when he returns.

Still, he cannot argue that going back to the wood is a bad idea, even if he would have rather not do it today. And Segundus will be with them.

Vinculus’s words have driven Childermass’s head in circles all night. That he has guessed the truth, or part of it, is not completely surprising – he can be irritatingly perceptive when he wants, and has spent most of the last year in Childermass’s company. Childermass isn’t particularly afraid of him. Few people listen to what he says, no matter that it has a tendency to come true.

All in all, Vinculus is the least of his problems.

He must speak to Segundus. It was wrong to act the way he had, to take his hand away without explaining, without making Segundus understand why nothing has changed. Why nothing _can_ change. Talking is not his strong point, but this mess is his own fault, and he must own up to it. If he doesn’t…he is not sure what will happen. This isn’t December – Childermass isn’t up and leaving. The last time he left Segundus, he came back and found him dead.

The yolk of his second egg is overdone and grey. Childermass sticks his fork into it, pushes the plate to one side. He’s lost his appetite.

Perhaps the conversation will not be as difficult as he thinks. Yesterday, Segundus was as releived as he was, giddy with it. Today, he will see things much more clearly.

Childermass takes his pipe out of his pocket, lights it, and puts it between his teeth. He hasn’t smoked in several days, and the smell should soothe him, but it only makes his thoughts louder.

Ten minutes later Hadley-Bright is back, not with Segundus, but with Charles.

“Mr Childermass.” Charles smiles, though there’s a nervous tilt to his head. “I am glad to see you looking better.”

Childermass nods in acknowledgement. “Will Mr Segundus be long?”

Hadley-Bright waves a hand. “Oh, he cannot come. Apparently he has a headache, and the doctor has warned him not to tire himself. He says that you will be of more use to me anyway seeing as you came both in and out of the wood on foot.”

Childermass frowns. It is not like Segundus to miss out on magical investigation of any kind, but perhaps he doesn’t want to go back to the forest. It was hardly a pleasant experience the first time.

Hadley-Bright goes to the door. “Hurry up, the both of you. I would like to make the most of the morning.”

Charles shoots Childermass an apologetic look, scurries after Hadley-Bright. Childermass sighs, puts out his pipe, and follows. There’s not much getting out of it, Segundus or not. Talking will just have to wait until they get back.

It’s almost a relief.

The morning is warm and breezy, and the sunlight lifts his spirits despite the apprehension settled around him like rain. A sparrow lets out a string of notes from a hedge as they pass. Hadley-Bright makes a remark that sounds like a line of borrowed poetry. Charles hums in acknowledgement but gives Childermass a wry look behind Hadley-Bright’s back. Childermass smirks.

Halfway to the stream they come across Vinculus, perched on a tree-stump and munching on a pear. Something about their little party must amuse him, because he picks himself up with a chuckle and trails along behind them, singing snatches of song about the Ravenking and other, raunchier, ballads. Hadley-Bright frowns disapprovingly at Childermass, but Childermass pretends not to see. Vinculus is cheerful, if irritating, company, and he would prefer to keep him in sight, where he cannot say anything to Segundus that Childermass would rather he didn’t.

The stream is running at its usual pace and temperature – Charles even dares to dip a finger in to prove it – and there’s no trace of magic in the air. Bees, real bees, hum in the flowers.

“Come.” Hadley-Bright points towards the fence at the bottom of the garden. “Which way did you go, Childermass? We should follow it exactly.”

Childermass folds his arms. “I walked in the stream.”

Hadley-Bright grimaces, and declares that they will travel next to the water, rather than in it.

The moor is russet in the morning sun and the chatter of the stream keeps them company as they walk. Hadley-Bright has an eager stride, and Charles soon drops a few feet behind him. 

“Mr Childermass?”

Childermass twists to check on Vinculus, who’s now trailing a good ten paces at the back of the group. “Mm?”

“I just...no. It is nothing.”

Childermass glances sideways. Charles's cheeks are pale under his freckles. “Spit it out.”

Charles reddens. “It is…Mr Childermass, I am sorry that I tried to stop you at the graveyard. I couldn't…that is, I did not realise what you were trying to do.”

“You couldn’t have known.” Childermass kicks a loose stone aside. “I wasn’t able to explain it, even if there was time.”

“I know, but if I had stopped you, Mr Segundus might have…I do not know how much air there is in a coffin, but it cannot be much.”

The air goes cold. Childermass hadn’t even considered what might have happened if he hadn’t opened the grave. If he hadn’t been so intent on proving it to Charles, if he’d passed out _before_ he got through the wood…

“You didn’t stop me,” he forces out, because Charles looks like he might cry. “Mr Segundus is quite well. We all are.”

Charles bites his lip, nods.

“And I imagine you were some help afterwards. Did you carry us back?”

“Not alone. Mr Sawyer – that is the watchman from the church – went to fetch the doctor, and he brought a horse and cart. It was a good thing that he did because Mr Segundus could not walk, even after he came to. He was very distressed when we couldn't wake you.”

Childermass clears his throat, looks up at the sky. A cloud moves over the sun, turning the air grey. “Then you have no need to apologise, and I should thank you for your help.”

“What else would I have done?” Charles smiles. “The vicar is quite angry with you.”

“For digging up the grave?”

“For where you put the dirt. Right in the front pews of the church.”

Childermass snorts. “I thought it had vanished.” Though it makes sense that it hadn’t – it is much harder to make an object disappear entirely than it is to move it to another place. “Have they got it out yet?”

“I haven’t dared ask.”

Childermass smirks. The cloud moves away from the sun, and the light warms his nose and forehead. For a moment, he forgets where they are going, and that he will have to speak to Segundus when they get back. It’s easy to lose himself in the light, and the wicked gusto of Vinculus’s singing.

The forest, when they reach it, seems perfectly ordinary, but Hadley-Bright still insists on dragging Childermass up and down the length of it for almost an hour, scribbling in a wad of folded papers. Charles follows them around at first but soon wanders out of the trees to stand in the sun with his eyes half-closed. Vinculus makes no pretence at interest and sits under a beech, amusing himself by balancing his pear core on his left knee.

“Well, I suppose we must go back,” Hadley-Bright says eventually, when the sun is at its height, Childermass’s answers are mostly grunts and Vinculus has fallen asleep. “I will return tomorrow with some spells and see if any of them take effect.”

He whistles to Charles, shrill and ever-so-slightly condescending. Charles raises a hand in acknowledgement. Childermass prods Vinculus awake with his toe, receiving a few curses for his trouble, and turns to join the others.

A flash of silver catches his eye. He stops, squints.  

It is the chain of Segundus’s crucifix, lying at the base of a small oak. Childermass bends and picks it up. Like the cross, the trace of magic is gone, though the catch is still encrusted with mud. He turns it over, debates calling Hadley-Bright, then decides against it. Segundus will want the chain back in one piece.

He tucks it in his pocket. Perhaps it will make what is to come easier.

Vinculus gets to his feet, sending the pear core rolling into the trees, and meanders towards the stream. He brushes past Hadley-Bright, who has paused to fold up his papers. Hadley-Bright stumbles. His pencil falls, hits a rock and goes skittering into the stream.

“Do watch where you’re going,” Hadley-Bright snaps, looking down at his hand. “You have made me cut myself.”

He holds up his index finger, giving Vinculus a stern look.

“My most humble apologies.” Vinculus sweeps off his hat in a mocking bow. “I do not know how you will ever recover from such an injury.”

Hadley-Bright reddens. “Do not be so foolish! I only meant…oh, never mind.” He bends to retrieve the pencil from the water.

“No!”

The word is out of Childermass’s mouth before he has fully understood why – his head is suddenly back in Starecross’s grounds, by the holly bush. Segundus, so wrapped in blankets he might have been a corpse already, jumping as the blackbird passed over his head, and then shaking out his bleeding finger by the water. 

Magic with blood is not unheard of, though it made Norrell shudder at its lack of respectability, and it is powerful. In the right hands, it could certainly bring someone back from the dead. If it had landed  _in_ the water...

Hadley-Bright freezes.

“Step back. Carefully.”

There must be something in his expression, because Hadley-Bright does what he is told without question, without indignation.

Childermass’s throat is sticky. He has read something about blood, blood and Faerie roads, but he cannot remember where. “Is your finger bleeding?”

Hadley-Bright holds it up to the light. A tiny bead of blood rests in the fresh cut, a grain of sand in an oyster.

“Wrap it in something.”

 Hadley-Bright pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and bundles it around his hand. Vinculus regards them warily from the other side of the stream.  

“What’s wrong?” Charles says, stepping into the shadows.

“Childermass has thought of something,” Hadley-Bright murmurs.

“Mr Segundus cut his finger by the holly bush, when we went to the garden.” Childermass swallows. “Neither of us could understand why we were drawn into Faerie, and not the hundred other people who have passed by the stream recently. I can’t think of any other trigger.”

Charles frowns. Vinculus looks pensive.

“How do you know it is not the holly bush that is the cause?” Hadley-Bright holds his hand above his head, makes a short leap over the stream. “Holly has ties Faerie, does it not?”

“Sometimes. But-”

“Then we must dig it up at once. There is no use in taking any risks.”  

Childermass opens his mouth to protest, but then he closes it. There is no proof that it wasn’t the holly, beyond his gut instinct and the fact the wood he’d seen hadn’t contained any.

“Did you cut yourself, then?” Charles says. “Is that why you were taken too?”

Childermass frowns. Segundus had split his lip in the vegetable garden, but Childermass hadn’t taken him back to the house via the stream. He had washed himself in the water two days later, but the wound had scabbed by then, and he hadn’t felt magic until after the funeral. He looks down at his hands. They’re covered in grazes and bruises from the brambles in the Faerie wood - no telling if one might have been made before then.

“Will you two hurry up?” Hadley-Bright gestures. “We must get back to the hall at once – everyone may be in more danger than they realise.”

             

*

 

The walk back to Starecross is barely two miles, but Hadley-Bright sets a brisk pace and Childermass’s breath is sharp in his chest by the time they reach the hall, his head aching. Clearly, he is not quite himself.

Hadley-Bright is ready to drag all four of them to start digging up the garden, but Charles points out that they have only two spades, and that the holly bush is hardly big enough to warrant so many pairs of hands.

“Two will do well enough, sir. I reckon you and I will make quick work of it, and Mr Childermass has had quite enough digging for the near future.”

Hadley-Bright clicks his tongue in a manner that reminds Childermass sharply of Strange, but he nods. “Go fetch the spades then. I will meet you there.”

He strides off in the direction of the stream. Charles pauses long enough for Childermass to give him a grateful nod, then turns and heads towards the vegetable garden.

“Are you going to help?” Childermass says to Vinculus, who is leaning against the wall of the house and scowling.

“Am I going to help dig up a bush which has done nothing wrong except prick Mr Segundus’s finger?” Vinculus scratches his chin. “I do not think so, Reader. You should stop them.”

“We shouldn’t take risks. Perhaps I’m wrong.”

“Not when it comes to magic. When it comes to _other_ things…”

“That’s enough.” Childermass folds his arms. He must be firm about this, or Vinculus will say something he shouldn’t. “I mean it.”

Vinculus shrugs, packing more insolence into the gesture than Childermass would have thought possible. “Are you going to speak to him?”

“I’m going to try and get to the bottom of what happened. If that involves speaking to-”

“What about the pantry?”

“If Mr Segundus is not in good temper, you will have to steal when he is not around or wait until mealtimes.”

Vinculus snorts rudely.

“Be quiet.” Childermass summons his sternest look. “You will hold your tongue when we are here, and you will behave.”

For a moment, Vinculus looks almost nervous, but then he grins. “Don’t you trust me, Reader?”

“Not entirely.”

“Then you trust me somewhat? Halfway? Can you measure it by inches?”

“Please…” Childermass pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to soothe the throbbing behind his eyes. “Shut up.”

The air goes quiet. When Childermass opens his eyes, Vinculus is gone.

He groans. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Vinculus, but he cannot fully rely on him either. He’s as slippery as an eel, and as predictable as rain in April, and he often says things he shouldn’t.

Well, he must keep his leering and his songs to himself. They are hardly helping.

The air of the kitchen is cool and silent. One of the chairs at the table is set a little apart from the others, a ring of tea still damp on the wood, but the room is empty. Segundus is probably in his study, or even his bedroom if he has a headache. He must be tired, more so than Childermass.

Childermass looks down at his hands, the scratches and the long purple bruise on his knuckles from the coffin. Blood, bruises and magic. He, Segundus and Honeyfoot had discussed blood magic once, but very briefly – Honeyfoot found it an uncomfortable matter and Segundus, though he had looked very much like he wanted to continue, had quickly changed the subject.

Childermass has read something about it, though, a long time ago. 

He goes upstairs to the east room. His bags are mostly untouched – he has never picked up the habit of unpacking things – and he roots through them until he finds the leather satchel that he keeps his papers in. The edges are stretched and bulging. He’s collecting more paper than ever these days, and he hasn't had his own desk since he worked for Norrell. 

He upends the satchel onto the bed and rifles through it. Bills, rubbings, notes on magic, scraps of spells, drawings of the marks on Vinculus’s body, and tens of loose book pages, some copied, some bought, some stolen. His fingers hover over a torn-out page from the memoirs of a Benedictine monk – a rambling mix of sixteenth-century gossip, notes on saints, and an account given by a travelling magician on avoiding enchantment.

He flips the page over.

‘ _Apparently a Fairy might use any number of things to lure a person out of England – a favourite possession, or the voice of someone known to them, is common – but failing that, a piece of hair, a tooth or a drop of blood will provide a powerful connection. This is a particularly dangerous type of magic, as the Fairy need not be anywhere near England to create a path.’_

The print has nothing else to offer, moving rather ramblingly onto a local court case about a disputed field border, but in the margin is a scribbled note in a low, slanting hand, so faded that Childermass has to hold the page up to the window to read it.

_‘A kind of magic very difficult to detect. Never shave or cut your hair if you suspect Faeries might be near. Do not let children keep their teeth when they fall out. Burn if possible. Beware if someone you love receives a wound near a magical place. If the connection between you is strong enough, you may both be in equal danger.’_

Childermass shivers – he never discovered who had written that note, but it has an earnestness about it that demands belief.

 _Beware if someone you love_.

That is an avenue of magic they know very little about. Accounts of whole families being taken to Faerie are common enough, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, but…

No - he must have cut himself at the funeral and not noticed it. It makes the most sense.

He stuffs the page in his pocket and hurries down the passage. Segundus’s study door is closed and there’s no reply when Childermass knocks, so he goes to the library, to Segundus’s favourite seat by the window. Segundus isn’t there. He isn’t in the dining room, the parlour, the kitchen or the vegetable garden either, but Childermass does find Mr Honeyfoot by the stream, staring with some perplexity at Charles, who is digging into the roots of the holly bush, and Hadley-Bright, who is leaning on his spade with his sleeves rolled up and telling an amusing anecdote about an old schoolfellow.

“Oh dear,” Honeyfoot says as soon as Childermass is in hearing distance, “I feel rather sorry for the holly. Do you really think it might be the cause?”

Childermass puts his hand into his pocket, but the page is hardly proof of the holly’s innocence. He shrugs.

Honeyfoot sighs. “It is a shame. I rather liked it there. We shall have to plant something to replace it.”

“Have you seen Mr Segundus?”

“Not since this morning.” Honeyfoot adjusts his stick. “I think he has been in his study all day.”

“All day?” Childermass blinks. “But…”

Then again, he had not knocked very loudly. Perhaps Segundus had been so deeply involved in his books that he had not heard. He might even have fallen asleep at his desk - he has done so before. 

Childermass goes back upstairs, vaguely annoyed that he has wasted part of the afternoon for the sake of knocking a second time. In fact, he has never really had to knock before – Segundus always knows when he is coming. He must have been distracted indeed.

He knocks more loudly this time, using his knuckles on the doorframe, but again, there is no reply. He frowns, tries the doorknob. Locked.

Segundus must have gone to bed with his headache. Childermass sighs, slips the page under his bedroom door, and heads downstairs in search of food.

            

*

 

Segundus must have found the page, because Childermass barely reaches the kitchen the next morning before Honeyfoot catches him by the elbow and drags him to one side.

“It is a very interesting find,” he says earnestly. “Blood magic isn’t an art I can pretend to be familiar with, but I cannot deny that it makes sense.”

Childermass clears his throat. His night was disturbed by blue fire and creeping vines, and he’s unprepared for conversation.

“Do you think, then, that the whole household might have been affected?” Honeyfoot unfolds the torn page – Childermass feels a flash of resentment that Segundus would give it to him – and points to the scribbles in the margin. “The note implies that there must be a strong connection between people for them both to be in danger by magic, but Starecross's past is hardly an ordinary one, and perhaps-”

“I think I must have cut myself.” Childermass holds out his battered hands. “It is the most likely explanation.” 

Honeyfoot’s expression clears. “Of course – I had not thought of that.”

Childermass forces a laugh, all-but snatches the page back and takes his leave as quickly as he can. Not for the first time, he’s grateful for Honeyfoot’s willingness to take people at their word – with proper research, it would not take long to surmise that the connection between Childermass and Segundus is rather more binding than that of a shared roof.

He goes to the vegetable garden in the hope of finding somewhere quiet to sit until it’s safe to go back inside and get breakfast, but he runs across a miserable-looking Charles and ends up going with him to the stream to tidy up the remains of the holly bush. There’s thankfully little room for conversation and they end up taking an axe to the last of the roots, which soothes Childermass's racing thoughts and excuses his red cheeks. 

When he returns to the house, covered in earth and with the old scar on his shoulder aching, Dr Harris is waiting for him. He chastises Childermass roundly for taking so much exercise so quickly, but after a thorough examination declares him ‘fit enough, though in need of rest’.

Childermass means seek out Segundus after lunch, but exhaustion creeps up on him when he goes to the stables to check on Brewer. He settles down in the orchard for a nap, promising himself only a few minutes, and wakes up to find that the sun has set. Someone, probably Vinculus, has placed a pear core on top of his hat that rolls into his lap when he gets to his feet.

He finds Charles in the kitchen tidying away the dinner things, waves off any questions about how he is feeling, and discovers that Segundus has retired early. Not much help for it then - they must wait until tomorrow. He snatches a bite of cheese and bread and goes to bed with his head hurting from too much sun and his thoughts heavy behind his eyes.

Another day ticks by, and then another. Segundus must move around the house and the gardens, but he is irritatingly hard to find, especially as he always knows when Childermass is coming. The single instance that they are made to share a room – the vicar coming to take tea, enquire after their health and quietly chastise them for disarranging his churchyard – Segundus makes so little conversation that Mr Honeyfoot asks him if he is suffering from a sore throat.

Childermass, though the words he knows he must say weigh on his thoughts, finds himself almost relieved. The conversation won’t be easy, and he is at a fair loss at how to begin it.

Within a week, the students start coming back to the hall, and with them the servants. Hannah is the first, a battered travelling bag under one arm and a broad smile on her face, and after her – much to Vinculus’s delight – the maids. Corridors that had been clean and bare are filled with suitcases, discarded shoes and the apparatus of half-formed spells. Doors and windows are thrown open and the last of the summer breeze blows away the dust and the memory of death. The grounds are constantly busy with people enjoying the good weather, though under strict instruction to avoid the stream, and Childermass finds himself settling quietly into his old routines. At Honeyfoot’s request, he even gives a short lesson on the influence of rain on protective spells.

Throughout it all, Segundus barely leaves his study.

Two days after the pupils have returned, Childermass undresses for bed, still unable to shake the exhaustion that clings his edges like moss. The house is loud, though it’s past midnight – Hadley-Bright is giving a lecture to the younger students about how the properties of plants might alter depending on the moon they are collected under, and the pupils, delighted at being back at the hall, are making rather a lot of noise. Childermass should be down there with them, but he can’t face it. He hasn’t seen Segundus all day and he cannot put off speaking to him much longer.

As he pulls off his breeches, something hits the floor with a clink. He looks down. A flash of silver, tangled around his belt – Segundus’s chain. He’d meant to return it, but in the confusion with the stream and the holly bush he’d forgotten he’d even found it. Segundus will want it back. He’s fairly adept now at repairing objects that have been parted.

Childermass looks down at the chain, sighs, and picks it up. It’s the perfect excuse to find Segundus and speak to him – most of the school is out in the garden, so they will run little risk of being disturbed.

He tugs his breeches back on, finds his boots and goes to the door. The corridor is quiet. He walks down it, dragging his feet, and knocks on Segundus’s study.

“It’s me.” He clears his throat. “I have something you will want back. And…we must talk. Please.”

He knocks again, and the door clicks open under his fist. Childermass pushes it ajar, peers inside. The room is in darkness.

He tries Segundus’s bedroom, but that door is locked, so he follows his instinct downstairs to the library and then to the parlour. Segundus is not there, but Honeyfoot is, a cup of tea at his elbow and a plate of bread and jam in front of him.

“Are you not joining the lesson?” Honeyfoot says, looking up from the table. “I should think you would have a few things to add to Mr Hadley-Bright’s knowledge.”

Childermass puts his hand in his pocket, curling the chain around his fingers. “Is Mr Segundus outside?

“Not that I am aware, but I have been in High Petergate this afternoon. Though…” Honeyfoot sighs. “I am concerned about him. I am sure he is very occupied with his book and with the school, but…do you not think he has been rather quiet, lately?”

Childermass keeps his expression blank, though his stomach clenches. “He has been busy.”

“I understand that, but you and he went through a severe ordeal, and he was ill for so long before that I am worried he might have…changed, in some way. You were in the forest, Mr Childermass. Do you think you might speak to him? See if you can find out if there is anything bothering him?”

Childermass shakes his head. “I don’t think that would do any good.”

“I cannot see how it would do any harm.” Honeyfoot huffs, looks down at his plate, and then brightens. “Why don’t the three of us take supper together? I am sure that we have things we need to discuss before the next Society meeting, and it will be just like old times – quite the thing, if Mr Segundus is melancholy.”         

“I really think-”

“Now, you stay there. I will fetch Mr Segundus. I daresay he is outside, though the doctor told him specifically he should stay indoors at night for the foreseeable future.”

Childermass tries to protest but there is no arguing with Honeyfoot, and soon he is alone. His knees creak when he lowers himself into the nearest chair. He could escape now to another part of the house, but it will only postpone what must happen. Honeyfoot never stays up as late as Segundus, and Childermass can keep awake a little longer. When Honeyfoot retires, they will have the chance to talk.

A newspaper on a nearby stool flutters in the breeze coming under the door. Childermass hooks it towards him and sets the front page down on the table, looking for all the world as if he has been reading for the past half-hour.

“Mr Honeyfoot, I am really quite tired.” Segundus’s voice filters from the hall. “It is very late.”

“Then I do not know why you were in the orchard, most especially when the doctor told you not to be out at this hour.”

“Mr Honeyfoot-”

“Besides, we will not be long. Mr Childermass has a few things he wishes to discuss with us, that is all.”

“Mr Childermass…” Segundus’s step falters but Honeyfoot must have seized his arm, because the next moment they are in the parlour.

“Good evening.” Childermass flicks his eyes up from his newspaper.

Segundus takes a step back. “I am sorry, Mr Honeyfoot. Perhaps some other time.”

“No, no.” Honeyfoot drags Segundus to a chair and pushes him into it. “The Society meeting is this week, and you are very busy these days.” He shoots Childermass a significant look. “You spend so much time in your study, we are almost concerned about you.”

“Are you?” Segundus turns his eyes on Childermass, and Childermass is forcibly reminded of the look Segundus had given him when he had come from Norrell to shut down the school.

“We are,” Honeyfoot goes on, oblivious. He pulls up a chair next to Segundus and sits down. “Why, I do not think you have taken a meal downstairs in a week.”

“Well, you may rest assured that I am quite alright, most especially considering no-one expected me to live to the end of the year until a few weeks ago.” He gets to his feet. “Now you must excuse me. I have some urgent business to attend to.”

“Oh, do not go yet.” Honeyfoot pushes the plate of bread into the middle of the table. “Why not bring your work down here? Maybe it is something we can help with, and even if it is not, we will not bother you, and you will have some company.”

“I am sorry, but I must have quiet.” Segundus shoots Childermass a cold look. “With all that has happened, you will forgive me if I find Starecross a little crowded all of a sudden.”

Segundus turns and strides out of the room. Childermass stares at his retreating back. His chest is tight.

“Well,” Mr Honeyfoot says. “What do you make of that?”

Childermass remembers to breathe, and the realisation crashes down on him like water - how inevitable his leaving has been.

He was a fool to hope otherwise. A selfish, bloody fool. 

“Mr Childermass?”

“Excuse me.” He gets to his feet. “I have remembered that I must be in Leeds by morning.”

“Leeds? But-”

“In fact, I have business further afield than that. I have put it off for too long.”

Honeyfoot frowns. “Well, of course we are very grateful that you have stayed to help us welcome the students back, but what about the stream? Your research?”

“I do not think we will learn anything further, and I am sure Mr Hadley-Bright will be on hand should anything come up.” He pushes the newspaper away, sending it spinning to the end of the table. “Give Mr Segundus my regards. I do not think you need to worry about him – I am sure he will be quite himself again very shortly.”


	10. Knight of Coins (reversed)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Knight of Coins (reversed): Apathy, inertia, idleness, discouragement.

Childermass turns the cards over, spreading them carefully over the sticky table of the Norwich public house. For the third time that evening, they tell him that he has unfinished business.

He snorts in disgust. “Can you not say anything besides that?”

The Knight of Coins looks up at him. The eye is wearing off his inked face, and his horse has lost most of its rear end to an incident with an overturned oil-lamp. Childermass rolls his eyes, folds the cards back into his coat pocket. He shouldn’t even have tried – they've given him little but the same message since September, and it is now December. He's beginning to feel like a character in a novel, staring at a portrait of a girl.

He reaches for his fourth ale. Weeks of studying the marks on Vinculus’s body have left his fingernails ink-stained and his head throbbing. The King’s Letters are complex, full of codes with no keys, and he no longer has the patience to bargain with Vinculus and make him sit still. He spends more time simply copying the letters out, telling himself that it is a perfectly worthy job. Sometimes he goes for days without even trying to read, until the weight of responsibility presses like a stone on his shoulders and he forces himself back to it.

He’d fled Starecross with Vinculus the same night Honeyfoot sat them down in the parlour. It was the work of a moment to pile his papers back into his bag, leave Segundus’s chain on his bedroom door handle and find Vinculus in the vegetable garden. His face must have shown exactly how he felt, because Vinculus hadn’t questioned where they were going, or why. They didn’t meet anyone on the way – everyone was in the garden, pointing at the moon. No-one was expecting them to slip away.

It was so obvious, once Segundus had said it. Starecross was not big enough for them both to avoid each other permanently, and Segundus had spent the last week keeping out of Childermass's way, staying in his study when he should have been teaching his students, talking with his friends, recovering. One of them had to leave, and it could not be Segundus, seeing as it was his school. Perhaps he was too...too kind to ask Childermass to go outright, but it had been clear in the parlour exactly how much he wanted him gone.

At the gate Childermass looked over his shoulder, heart sinking under the memory of what had happened last time he had left Starecross, and he’d almost turned back. But this was different. Segundus was perfectly well, and he wanted Childermass to leave. He’d waved off Vinculus’s questions, spurred Brewer forward.

They’ve not been back to Starecross in three months. Childermass has dragged them to London, Shropshire, Lincoln, Manchester, even once as far as the border of Scotland, but there’s little purpose behind it. He's researched what he can of blood magic, but the sources are limited no matter where he goes. Since leaving Yorkshire, he’s found it difficult to stay in one place.  

He scrubs his eyes vigorously, trying to jolt himself out of a doze. He hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks – the winter nights are long, and his dreams clogged with magic. The very first evening he’d spent away from Starecross, he dreamed of Segundus in Faerie, tree bark pressing closer and closer around him until it was so tight against his ribs that they snapped. Childermass woke covered in sweat, staggered downstairs to demand a dish from the startled landlady and filled it with water from the horse trough. It was an adjustment on Strange’s spell, instinctive and difficult to manage, but it showed Segundus was in England, a bright light in the top left segment of the basin.

He should have stopped there, but he didn’t. With a soft word, the water shimmered, fixing on Segundus’s study at Starecross. Segundus was at his desk, his head resting on a pile of papers, asleep. His elbow must have caught the ink pot, because it was upended over a nearby book and beginning to drip onto the floor. Childermass wanted to reach right into the room and mop up the spill – Segundus looked pale and tired, and he wouldn’t want to clean it when he woke.

He’d watched the picture for a moment longer, checking that Segundus was breathing easily, then let the image fade. He swore to himself that would be the one and only time he did such magic – it was no better than looking through a keyhole and it could only bring trouble – but it was an embarrassingly short time before he performed it again. He was in Sheffield, and the front-page headline was of a road accident in York, a carriage overturned and several passers-by injured. It wasn’t likely, but Segundus might have had any reason to be in York at the time – visiting the Honeyfoots in High Petergate or called on urgent business for the society – and Childermass had to know, had to see for himself that Segundus was well…

The basin showed Segundus in Starecross’s kitchen, fork in hand and laughing with someone outside the picture. Childermass’s shoulders relaxed. Segundus was safe and well. He even looked…happy. The fire was lit, casting dancing light that made his eyes glitter.  

Childermass shook the water out into the nearest gutter. It was wrong to feel anything but relieved that Segundus was well, was laughing. That was why Childermass had left – so that Segundus could run his school, study his books and be happy.

It hadn’t been the last time he used the basin, though he swore that every time he did would be the last. It takes very little to set him worrying – waking up with the memory of Segundus coughing, a newspaper report about a man robbed in the York area, an ambiguous reading on his cards. Childermass never knew that he had the capacity to worry so much – half the time, there’s no space in his head for anything else. He checks Segundus’s location regularly, dreads any correspondence that might be from Starecross, telling him that Segundus’s condition has changed and he is ill again, or that some disaster, magical or otherwise, has befallen him.

Being away is different, this time. It makes him think foolish things, like how he should have just kissed Segundus last December, because Segundus is sensible, and there are ways and means to hide, and he can hardly bear feeling the way he does now. 

It wouldn’t have been better, though. Not for Segundus.  

Contrary to his fears, the snatches Childermass has seen of him in the basin – never for more than a few moments, and never without good cause – are positive. Segundus appears to be healthy and whole. He walks on the moor a lot, a pensive expression on his face, and spends time with his books. If he seems to be in his study a lot of the time, that is only to be expected. He probably still has work to catch up on.

This is the way it should be. John Segundus, forgetting him.

Childermass tried being angry for a time in the hope it would make him feel better – it was Segundus who had tried to kiss him last December, after all – but he cannot shake the knowledge that he let it happen. Besides, Starecross is not his school. He was only ever a guest, and he can hardly expect Segundus to keep to his rooms just because Childermass is concerned about him. Segundus has others who’ll take care of him, people who have a much better track record at it than Childermass.

The public room door bangs open, letting in a blast of cold air. Childermass blinks, instinctively pulling the folds of Segundus’s olive scarf more tightly around his neck. He hadn’t meant to take it with him, but it was still in his saddlebags when he left the hall and by the time he discovered it, it was too late to go back. Three months have left the wool smelling only of his own pipe smoke, but the colour reminds him of Segundus, his cheeks red with the cold and his breath rising in wisps by the market stall.

Christ, he misses him.

Childermass drains his ale and waves his hand for another. When he was working at Hurtfew and Hanover Square, he drank wine – Norrell had not cared for much else – but Childermass was raised on ale, and he finds it comforting. The barmaid sets down her cloth and swaps his mug for a fresh one. She’s short and round, with pretty eyes and dark hair, and she smiles at Childermass when she catches his eye. Childermass hugs his ale close, looks away. A man bursts into song, is booed into silence by his companions. The three-day headache eating at Childermass's temples is getting worse. He should find Vinculus, move somewhere quiet and make some headway with the letters, but he’s not in the mood.

Fuck it. He’s going to bed.

The room spins when he gets to his feet. Too much ale, not enough food. Another evening with a dizzy head and the promise of waking with an aching one. He should know better. He’s too old to drink heavily, and he has to go to the cathedral tomorrow to look at the carvings on the choir stalls. He cannot waste the morning oversleeping.

It takes him too long to get up the stairs, and even longer to light the oil lamp that sits on the windowsill. The yellow flame makes his vision swim. Vinculus’s bedsheets have been made up by someone since this morning. He won’t like that. He’ll probably take himself outside to sleep or find someone else’s bed to warm. Childermass hopes so. He’d rather be alone.

The shutters are loose, letting in a ripple of cold air. Childermass stumbles to close them, then takes off the scarf and folds it around the bedpost. Vinculus has no doubt guessed its origin and even if he has not, he seems to have a way of knowing when Childermass’s mind is on Starecross and giving him a look one would reserve for a dog with a missing leg. 

The bed creaks when he slumps onto it, pressing his back against the wall. He tugs at his left boot. It catches on his stocking, slips out of his grasp and skitters across the room. He doesn’t bother to fetch it. The other boot hits the floor with a thud. Childermass turns over on his side, pulls his knees into his chest, and tries to sleep.

He dreams of Starecross, and of the wood – the chatter of the shadows in the trees, a rush of freezing water and Segundus slipping out of his grasp, falling back into Faerie…

A knock on the door shakes him out of sleep. The oil lamp flickers, and his temples pulse.

The knock comes again, louder.

“What do you want?” Childermass shouts, pressing the heel of his hand to his left eye.

“Letter come for you, sir.”

The barmaid. Childermass groans. He kicks his boots of his path, stumbles to the door and tugs it open.

She smiles at him, dark eyes shining, and holds out a square of paper, slightly curled at the edges. “The boy who delivered it said they’d been looking for you for some time, but you kept moving on.”

Childermass takes the paper, closes the door before she can say anything else. He’s not in the mood for conversation. He pulls the spindly chair towards the windowsill, misses, and sits hard on the floor. He stays down. Getting up again seems like an awful lot of effort.

Clearly, he’s drunker than he thought.

The paper is marked Starecross, but although the hand is familiar, it is not Segundus’s. The letters are too upright, too small.

Honeyfoot.

He opens the letter with shaking hands, tearing it around the seal.

 

           

_High Petergate, York_

_James Honeyfoot to John Childermass December 5th, 1818_

_Mr Childermass,_

_I do apologise if you have received this letter twice – we know that you are travelling often these days, and I am concerned that my previous message (or your reply) has gone astray._

_I write to invite you to visit Starecross for Yule. I quite understand that you may have other obligations this winter, but there will be a dance on 20 th of the month – the time coincides with Hadley-Bright’s birthday, and the students are eager to mark both occasions. You would be more than welcome to stay at Starecross afterwards, and myself and Mrs Honeyfoot are holding a small Christmas dinner for family and friends in High Petergate, to which you are invited. We are quite eager to see you again – how quickly time goes these days! – and be updated on your work._

_I very much hope that you receive this letter in time for the party. The pupils have decided amongst themselves that the dance will be a masquerade, though there is no need for you to go to any extravagance if you do not wish to._

_We await your reply or your presence most eagerly._

_Yours,_

_Mr James Honeyfoot._

 

_P.S. Mrs Honeyfoot has reminded me that our invitation for dinner is also extended to Vinculus, on the condition that he remains presentable and fully-clothed at the table._

_P.P.S. I am not in the habit of extending my letters beyond their welcome, but I have just come across the most extraordinary thing. I do not know if you remember, for you were not well at the time, but when you first woke after the incident at the graveyard you asked me with great concern about nature wanting stuff to ‘vie strange forms with fancy’. I must admit that I had almost forgotten about it until just now, but my youngest daughter is a great reader of Shakespeare and has several volumes of his works. This morning she left a page open to_ Antony and Cleopatra _, and I have taken the liberty of copying the below passage for you:_

_'But, if there be, or ever were, one such,_  
    _It's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff_  
_To vie strange forms with fancy'_

_I am no expert on literature, but my daughter tells me that the scene is one of the last in the play. I am certain that you have already discovered the source if you did not know it already, but as I was preparing to send you this letter anyway, I thought I would mention it._

_Yours again,_

_Mr James Honeyfoot_

_Past the size of dreaming_. Childermass scans the passage a second time, forehead knitting. The same words Segundus had said in the forest, and in the garden before…before…

He squeezes his eyes shut. Norrell had a work of Shakespeare somewhere, but Childermass never picked it up – he had no need for stories. Why would Segundus? If there were more than a passing mention of magic in the _Antony and Cleopatra_ , he would have told Childermass about it already.

He has the urge to find the nearest bookshop and purchasing a copy of the play, but it is almost midnight. He makes himself read the letter again, trying to take in the dates Honeyfoot had set out, but his vision is blurry and his brain working like a dying clock, several ticks behind the rest of the world.

The oil lamp flickers. The letter slides from Childermass’s fingers as he drops his head onto his knees and lets out a sigh that drains him to his core.

 

*

 

He wakes the next morning with a grainy mouth and pounding head. Segundus’s scarf has come off the bedpost in the night and is tangled around his feet. Childermass kicks it free, rolls over and catches sight of Honeyfoot’s letter on the floor. He fumbles for it and blinks at the words in the dim light, hoping that they’ve somehow changed.

They haven’t. If anything, they’re even more confusing. The lines of verse wink out at him from the page – Honeyfoot had scribbled the postscript too quickly and the ‘n’ in 'nature' is smudged.

There’s something about the words that he likes, though he has no idea what they might mean.

“Are we summoned?” Vinculus appears from nowhere at the foot of the bed “What could the fine Honeyfoot want with us?”

“Nothing.” He is not discussing this now. He is not even _thinking_ about it until he has washed his face.

“It didn’t appear that way to me. In fact-” Vinculus grins “-I would say that he was inviting us to a party.”

Of course, Vinculus has read it. Childermass shouldn’t have expected anything else.

There’s no question of going to Starecross. Segundus does not want him there, and he probably has no idea that Honeyfoot has written. Perhaps he won’t be bold enough to turn Childermass away at the door, but the thought of sitting through various social events being, at best, steadfastly ignored is not a pleasant one.

Then again, Segundus will _be_ there. Even if they don’t speak, Childermass will see him, and know where he is without using a silver basin. He might even get two or three night’s sleep, and an excuse to visit again at a later date. 

No. It is not fair on Segundus to go back after only three months. Childermass must get out of the habit of thinking of Starecross as anything more than a big house with too many people in it, and a beautiful garden.

He sits up and reaches for his boots. “We’re not going.”

“You are quite right.” Vinculus keeps grinning. “I will be in London for Yule, visiting Threadneedle Street. You, on the other hand…”

“We should continue with the Letters. The York Society expect-”

Before he can finish, Vinculus has a hand on his arm and his hauling him to his feet. “There are some – such as myself – who drink too much because they enjoy it. And there are some who should find better things do with their time, such as calling on their friends.”

Childermass rolls his eyes.

“Come, Reader.” Vinculus releases him and scampers to the other end of the room. “It is already the fourteenth of the month. If you ride this morning, you will be at York in time for the dance, and you will not even have to use the King’s Roads.”

“I do not want-”

“Ah!” Vinculus lifts a bony finger and wags it in his direction. “You must go to York, where I know I can find you.”

“What do you expect me to do? Run off?”

Vinculus laughs. “One never knows.”

“I’m not going,” Childermass says again, but he gets the distinct impression that Vinculus does not believe him any more than he believes himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think Childermass would be able to keep away from Starecross for long, did you? 
> 
> Also, chapter lengths might start to get a bit more uneven now - just the way things worked out, I'm afraid!


	11. La Roue de Fortune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> La Roue de Fortune: Answers, broader perspective, fate, opportunity

Mrs Honeyfoot waves from a window the moment Childermass dismounts Brewer on High Petergate. She has a rash of freckles on her cheeks despite the cold weather, and a shawl pulled tight around her broad shoulders.

“Mr Childermass! We thought the letter had not reached you – that you were not coming!"

“I had business to take care of,” Childermass lies. It had taken two days and as many bad dreams, not to mention numerous sly looks from Vinculus, before he decided to come to York at all, and he'd ridden as slowly as he could to time his arrival for the twenty-third. If he must sit through Christmas dinner, he will – perhaps Segundus will be forced to speak to him if the Honeyfoots are present – but he will not suffer a dance. “I came to accept your invitation to dinner.”

“That is wonderful! Mr Honeyfoot is at the hall, but we have tea here if you will take some?”

Childermass considers, nods. He’s thirsty from the long ride, and Brewer needs a rest. "Thank you.”

“Is your Book with you?”

He shakes his head. “South for the winter. He’ll be along when he cares to.”

Mrs Honeyfoot looks decidedly relieved. Childermass supposes that Vinculus is an acquired taste.

“Come in then, come in. Margaret will bring you through.”

Childermass knocks and is hurried up the stairs by a thin-faced maid with red hair escaping under her cap. He has only been inside High Petergate once or twice after Society meetings, and never without Segundus. The house is narrow, and most of the space taken up with tables, stools and rows of books crowded on shelves.

“Thank you – please bring us some tea,” Mrs Honeyfoot says to the maid, smiling kindly. She ushers Childermass into the main sitting room. “Sit down, Mr Childermass, do.”

The maid bobs, scurries away. Childermass sits on a hard-backed chair, takes off his coat and folds it in his lap. His eyes skim the shelves instinctively – years of scouring bookshops for Norrell has given him a bad habit of weighing up other's reading material - finally landing on a leather-bound volume at the end of the nearest table.

 _The Works of Mr William Shakespeare: The Histories of Henry IV, V and VI._ Childermass touches his coat pocket, where a page from _Antony and Cleopatra_ is crumpled up amongst buttons, pieces of string and his cards. The only copies of Shakespeare he could find in Norwich were too bulky to make Brewer lug to Yorkshire, so he’d browsed a set of tragedies and torn out the relevant page when the shopkeeper wasn’t looking. He must have read it a hundred times since, but he’s no more enlightened than he was before. The language is unnecessarily complex, and though he’s gathered that someone, presumably Antony, is dead, and Cleopatra none too happy about what fate awaits her, he cannot understand why Segundus would like that passage enough to repeat it not once, but twice.

Unfortunately, it is rather too late to ask him.

“Margaret is new, but a fast learner. I have high hopes for her.” Mrs Honeyfoot perches opposite Childermass in a pink armchair with too many cushions, follows his eyes to the table. “Something about our books interests you, Mr Childermass? Do you read Shakespeare?”

He shakes his head.

Mrs Honeyfoot sighs. “I have never been able to get involved in the stories. That book is Elizabeth’s – we can hardly get her to put it down. I do not understand the half of what she comes out with, but she seems to enjoy it. She and her sisters are at the hall already, helping their father to set up. Jane and Mary are simply wearing matching blues, but Elizabeth insists upon going as Titania – a fairy queen of some sort, from one of her plays – though the others say no-one will know who she is meant to be playing. Mind you, a mystery is rather the point of a masquerade.”

Childermass frowns. “What masquerade?”

“Did my husband not tell you it was in costume? Oh, that is quite like him to forget such an important thing – I said to him quite clearly before he-”

“No.” Childermass leans forward. “He wrote that it was a masquerade, but the letter said that it was on the twentieth.”

Mrs Honeyfoot puts a hand to her mouth. “Of course, you could not have known! We had a leak in the main hall, not a week ago. It is all fixed now, but the whole party had to be postponed to this evening. We sent out letters, but I suppose yours was bound to go astray, with you travelling so often.” She smiles. “Why, it is quite the perfect thing that your business did not keep you longer!” 

Childermass smothers a groan. Someone, somewhere, is laughing at him. Probably Vinculus.

Margaret shuffles nervously into the room, balancing a silver tray. She gives Childermass a wary look as she sets the tea things down, and hurries out as quickly as her long skirt permits her.

“My husband is at Starecross now, making preparations.” Mrs Honeyfoot reaches for the sugar. “He will be quite pleased to have an extra pair of hands to…but of course, I am getting ahead of myself. You must be tired from your journey.”

She pushes a steaming cup towards him. Childermass opens his mouth to say that he has no intention of attending a party this evening, but then he thinks better of it. He must go to Starecross if he’s to stay in Yorkshire – the Honeyfoots have no place to put up both himself and Brewer – and beyond turning around and riding straight back to Norwich, there is very little he can do. Mrs Honeyfoot has already seen him and she’s bound to mention it to her husband if he isn’t at the hall, and then Honeyfoot will tell Segundus and…

And nothing. It is not as if Segundus is going to write to him and complain.

Still, he cannot quite bring himself to run away. He has spent the last week steeling himself to come, and he is determined to see Segundus in person, even if it is just once. Even if they do not speak.    

He sighs, accepts the tea, and lets Mrs Honeyfoot chatter at him about the new curate at the church, and Mr Honeyfoot’s bad leg, and how he and Mr Segundus have been so busy of late that she has hardly seen them, and they must take some time off over Yule or they will make themselves quite ill. After an hour, when he has had a second cup and is itching to be outdoors again, Childermass makes his excuses and gets to his feet. Mrs Honeyfoot apologises profusely for "carrying on so", pushes a slice of bread and honey into his hand, tuts about the loose threads on his coat and ushers him to the top of the steps, assuring him that he will see her at the masquerade – “I will be dressed as Maid Marian and Mr Honeyfoot is Robin Hood.”

If Childermass cannot imagine Honeyfoot as Robin Hood, he does not think it kind to say so, so he merely nods, goes down the stairs and shuts the front door behind him.

The streets of York are already dim, and it is nearly dark by the time he reaches Starecross. The evening is cold and still, with the threat of rain heavy in the air. Torches line the path to the hall, casting orange streaks on the damp grass. Brewer snorts. Childermass reaches down at pats his neck.

“Nothing to worry about,” he murmurs, breath rising silver. “Just a party.”

Brewer tosses his head with a huff.  

Starecross’s doors are wide open, draped with ribbons and garlands of leaves. People scurry back and forth, laden with fabric, paper decorations and furniture. Childermass’s stomach clenches and he nearly turns Brewer around, but he makes himself dismount and go the stables. Evening dew seeps through the hole in his heel and into his stockings. He needs that new pair of boots, but he has had other things on his mind. 

He leaves Brewer with a stable boy and heads for the kitchen door. Better to make a quiet entrance.

The kitchen is in uproar. The table is a battlefield of bowls and plates, and maids scuttle in and out with coal buckets and brooms. Hannah leans over the fire, turning a trio of chickens on a spit. Someone has left a handful of coloured ribbons hanging amongst the aprons.  

“Good evening.”

Hannah jumps, knocks the spit with her knee and catches it a moment before the chickens hit the fire. Fat hisses. Childermass hurries to help her steady it.

“Mr Childermass.” She gives him a bright smile – a smile that, once, might have been more than friendly. “We thought you weren’t to come!”

“I did not realise I would be in time for the party.”

Perhaps Hannah catches his tone, or perhaps she knows him better than he realises, because she pats his arm. Her big hands are mottled from the heat of the fire.

“Mr Honeyfoot was in the dining room, last I saw him. You’d best go speak to him or Segundus before you unpack anything – we’ve got more staying than usual, and lord knows where they’ve put all of them. Here, I’ll take your coat.” She wipes her fingers on her skirt and holds out her hands. “We’ll keep it with the aprons so it doesn’t get mixed up with the others.”

Childermass shrugs off his greatcoat. The firelight makes it even shabbier than usual, down to its patched elbows and the burn on the sleeve where he dropped a candle on it three years ago. “Best to keep it out of sight,” he says, smirking. “I am told I offend enough sensibilities with my presence, heaven forbid letting my coat mix with that of good folk.”

Hannah clicks her tongue. “You know perfectly well that was not what I meant.”

Childermass grins, puts the coat in her hands and lays his hat on top of it.

“Got any bags?”

“In the stable. I’ll fetch them later. Vinculus is south for the winter, so your pies are quite safe.”

“Not if the pupils have anything to do with it. The older ones are worse than the children, thinking they can take what they want.”

Childermass laughs. He’d like to stay in the kitchen longer, but Hannah has to turn back to her chickens and after the second maid has almost tripped over him, he squares his shoulders and steps into the hall.

The chairs and sideboards have been taken away, leaving a long, wide space for dancing. A table at the back of the room holds a silver bowl of punch and a few covered dishes. Someone has wound holly around the bannisters and the columns.

Childermass approaches the nearest garland, frowning, and takes one of the leaves between his fingers.  

“Do not worry," a voice says quietly at his left, "it is not from the grounds. We got it from the village.”

Childermass turns. Seeing Segundus in person is very different from watching him in the basin. There’s a light to his eyes that a picture can’t show, and his face is less hollow than it was three months ago, though there are still shadows on his forehead and at the corners of his mouth. 

“We’ve planted a mulberry tree to replace the holly.” Segundus adjusts a bundle of red cloth clamped under his right arm. There’s a leaf in his hair, and a smear of soot on his chin. He doesn’t quite meet Childermass’s eyes. “It will be a year or two before it is mature, but it has no association with John Uskglass or magic, and it will have fruit eventually. Though, even Mr Hadley-Bright is sure the stream is safe now.”

“Really?” Childermass has to fight to get the word out, almost too surprised to speak. Honeyfoot must have said that he’d invited Childermass, if Segundus is composed enough to talk about mulberries. 

“Time convinced him. And…” Segundus sighs. “We tried to keep everything that happened in the forest as quiet as possible, but there was a funeral and there have been rumours. Last month, a boy from one of the farms got run under a plough and was badly hurt. His parents brought him here at night, to the stream, hoping, but...nothing happened.”

Childermass keeps silent. He doesn't know what to say, and he is finding it hard not to reach out and touch Segundus's face, to make certain he is not a dream. Childermass has not heard his voice in three months, and it is so much like he remembers that he is almost convinced that they have been in this exact spot before, right down to the stripe of dirt on Segundus's chin. 

“Mr Levy has a theory about it," Segundus goes on. "He found an engraving in a church near Nottingham, and a manuscript. He sent me a letter.” Segundus puts his hand in his pocket. “Oh. It is upstairs.”

For a moment it seems like Segundus might invite him to his study, like the last twelve months never happened, but then he shakes his head. “It does not matter – he is coming here tonight. I will send him to speak to you. It will make more sense if he tells you himself.”

The holly shifts in the breeze from the open doors. The wood panels that skirt the ceiling are carved with twisting vines and ivy, and a raven perches amongst raised oak leaves, wings unfolding at the edge of flight.

“What happened to the boy?" Childermass murmurs. "The one they brought to the stream?”

“We tried – called the doctor, did what we could for him. He will live, but he will not walk unaided again.”

“That can’t have been an easy night.”

“No. It was not.”

Segundus’s fingers go to his collar, twisting nervously. Childermass wants to take his hand and not let it go. 

“You fixed it, then?” he says instead, stuffing his hands in his pockets where they can’t do any mischief and nodding to the flash of silver chain under Segundus's shirt. 

“What?” Segundus looks down at the crucifix. “Oh, yes. Though the first time I tried I got distracted by one of the pupils, and I accidently joined two of the best willow teacups together instead. We had rather a time trying to separate them without breaking the handles, and then…” He trails off. “But yes. I fixed it.”

Segundus makes a strange, half-motion like he’s going to say something else, then looks away. The hall is hardly silent, but for a moment it seems like it is.

“You should have told me Levy had found something,” Childermass murmurs, grasping for something to say. “I might have been able to help.”

“I did not think…” Segundus’s voice catches. “That is, I thought-”

“Mr Segundus, sir!” A girl skids to a halt in front of them. “Jameson has set off the books in the north corridor again!”

“Oh dear.” Segundus puts his hand on Childermass’s arm. “We recently discovered a collection of books that belonged to one of the previous owners – if anyone so much as tries to move them, they burst out in the most awful howling.”

In an instant Segundus is gone, hurrying after the girl. Childermass clenches his hands tighter in his pockets. His mouth is dry, and his sleeve still warm where Segundus touched it.

What game is Segundus playing? He had been plain enough, the last time they had spoken, that he wanted none of Childermass at Starecross. Segundus does not play tricks. He is a poor liar, and his face is more honest than sometimes does him good.

“Mr Childermass. How are you proceeding with the King’s Book?”

Childermass supresses a groan, turns to Honeyfoot. “I have parts written out. I'm thinking of getting more copies made, to see if anyone else can offer a translation.”

“I see.” Honeyfoot’s face, which had been so drawn the last time Childermass had seen it, has filled out again, and his cheeks are ruddy. He looks in good health, if a little older than he had in the summer. “That is your prerogative, I suppose, though I do not know anyone in the country who might have the same ability to read the letters as you.”

Childermass shrugs.

“In fact, I have a proposal that may help you with your work. I looked for you at the last Society meeting, but you were not there.”

“I had business in London.”

Honeyfoot nods indulgently. “Of course, of course.”

Childermass’s skin prickles. “Your proposal, Mr Honeyfoot?”

“Yes, quite. The fact of it is that we have more demand for places at Starecross than ever before. Mr Segundus and myself are eager to teach as many as we can, but we are running into difficulties.”

“No space to put them?”

“Not at all – most of the older pupils are content to lodge where they can, and we do not get many of the young ones from too far afield, at least not yet. What we lack, Mr Childermass, are people to teach them. Experienced theoretical magicians are one thing, but practical ones are quite another. Mr Hadley-Bright cannot be in the north all the time and Mr Segundus does his best, but there are so many other things for a schoolmaster to attend to and the doctor insists he must not strain himself. We are already finding splits in the student body between Norrelites and Strangites, sometimes for the most foolish of reasons, and we are eager to find a teacher that follows neither school – someone who takes their own path in magic.” Honeyfoot smiles. “I would not dream of asking you to stay permanently at Starecross, but we would quite easily be able to work the student’s lessons around, say, one week per month, even less. You would have plenty of time for travelling, and help with the King’s Book if you wanted it. There would be wages to consider, but I am sure we can make you a very fair offer – Mrs Lennox knows as well as anyone of your contributions to English Magic.”

Childermass blinks. “Mr Segundus has…suggested this?”

“He is aware of our need for a teacher, and more than aware of your ability. I thought that he would write to you, but when I asked him the other day, he said he had been too busy.”

Childermass’s mind churns. Segundus had spoken to him, just now. He had approached Childermass, when Childermass had not even seen him.

Perhaps he really was too busy to write. Perhaps he has decided to set the past aside, the way Childermass hoped he would, three months ago.

The thought leaves him strangely cold.   

“I am not sure I would be a good instructor for young people, let alone adults.”

Honeyfoot’s frown deepens. “You do yourself a disservice, sir. The pupils often speak about the times you have been at Starecross. There would be no need for many practical demonstrations if you were not comfortable with it, but you are one of the few men in England who knew both Norrell and Strange – even if you only talked about their ways, I am sure the pupils would find it most engaging.”

“I am not a bard.”

Childermass's voice comes out harshly and most people would have told him to hold his tongue, but Mr Honeyfoot only looks disconcerted. “Well…we will not be appointing anyone for a few weeks. Even if we do, I am sure we could come to some arrangement at a later date. Speak to Mr Segundus, if that is what concerns you. I cannot imagine he will object.”

 _Are you a fool, man_? Childermass wants to scream. _Do you not_ notice _what is going on?_

He doesn’t shout. He needs to think, somewhere with fewer decorations and no people.

“Is there a place for me to stay?”

Honeyfoot’s frown eases. “The east room. Charles pointed out that you usually rise early, and that the sun would not bother you." The last of tension leaves Honeyfoot’s face, and he smiles. “You had best go and rest yourself – the party begins in less than an hour. Charles will bring a jug and basin to your room, if you can find him.”

“Thank you, but I’m unprepared for a masquerade – I thought I’d already missed it.”

“Oh, nonsense. This is only a schoolboy’s dance, Mr Childermass – you need not do more than cut some eyeholes into a scarf. I am sure one of the maids will have a piece of spare cloth, if you ask her nicely.” Honeyfoot’s eyes go to Childermass’s face, and he colours. “Of course, you can simply stay as you are. We will all be delighted to see you, no matter what you wear.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Honeyfoot, but I would not be good company.”

“Well...think it over. You can always come down later on.”

At the other end of the room, a pack of boys approach the refreshment table, giggling loudly. Honeyfoot sighs. “I had better stop them before they cause mischief. Good evening.”

He turns and hurries over to the boys. Childermass moves as quickly as he dares towards the nearest exit, dodging around the excited guests who are beginning to fill up the room with alarming speed. He keeps his head down, avoiding eye contact - he is in no mood to speak to anyone else. 

“Mr Childermass!”

A young woman in a bright green dress darts into his path. Her face is round and cheerful, her resemblance to her father unmistakable, though Childermass has only met her a handful of times before, the last on a warm August day at a funeral.

Christ, he is beset by Honeyfoots.

“Mr Childermass, we thought you were not coming! What will you be masquerading as? My sister thinks you would make a very good Harlequin, but I-”

“Elizabeth!” Mr Honeyfoot’s voice cracks loudly through the dining hall. “Mr Childermass is tired from his journey – do not bother him.”

The girl pulls back, laughing. “Alright, I shall leave you be. I am certain I will see you later tonight.”

“Wait.” _Elizabeth_. “You are playing Titania this evening?”

Elizabeth raises an eyebrow. “How astute of you. I have not even put on my mask.”

“Your mother…” Childermass waves a hand. “I've a question to ask you. About…” He resists the urge to lower his voice. “About _Antony and Cleopatra_.”

She breaks into a wide smile. “Do you read Shakespeare, Mr Childermass?”

“No, but…there is a passage at the end of the play that I have come across of late.” Childermass fumbles in his pocket for the page, remembers that it is in his coat, and his coat is in the kitchen. “Words spoken by Cleopatra – ‘but, if there be, or ever were, one such, it's past the size of dreaming’.”

“The final act, I think.” Elizabeth cocks her head. “What is your question, then?”

Childermass falters. The words have gone around his mind so much, he hardly knows what to ask.

“What does it mean?”

“Mean?” Elizabeth frowns. “Words can mean any number of things. It depends who is reading them.”

“But they always come at the same point in the play, tell the same story." 

“Yes, but…” Elizabeth shrugs. “If it is only the story, then Cleopatra, to spite Antony, puts out that she is dead, and Antony mortally wounds himself before he realises it is a lie. He dies in her arms; so the war is lost, and Cleopatra taken prisoner. She kills herself rather than be paraded for the ‘shouting varletry of censuring Rome’.”

Childermass blinks. That is not quite the tale he had imagined.

“They sound like a troupe of fools.”

Elizabeth smiles. “It is a strange play. In many ways, it is more of a comedy than a tragedy. Even at the end there are parts that would better suit a melodrama. It plays on tragic themes, though - romance leading to disaster, especially. But _Antony and Cleopatra_ is different, I think, when it comes to love. The characters are older than most of Shakepeare's lovers, and the stakes are much higher.”

Childermass swallows. “And ‘past the size of dreaming’ – is it a well-known passage?”

Elizabeth frowns. “I would not say so. It is an expression of-”

“Elizabeth!” Honeyfoot gestures. “What did I say about bothering Mr Childermass?”

Elizabeth rolls her eyes. “I had best go.”

“Wait! You were about to say that-”

“It does not matter.” Elizabeth sidesteps him neatly. “If you are truly so interested in literary debate, I am sure there will be opportunity this evening. Father is right – you need to rest, and I must help with the last of the decorations. This will be a wonderful evening!”

She hurries off. Childermass considers pursuit, but the crowd quickly swallows her and pushing through it will only put him in the path of more people who might want to speak to him.

He sighs and makes for the stairs, head spinning with half-formed questions. He's no wiser about the passage than he was ten minutes ago - if anything, he is less certain what Segundus might have meant in the garden, the wood.

The east room has been recently swept, and specks of dust float in the air. Childermass lights the nearest candle with a soft word. Someone has fetched his bag from the stable and left it on his bed. On top of it is a strip of black silk – perhaps once part of a lady’s scarf – with two holes cut neatly into it.

Damn Hannah’s efficiency.

Raised voices drift, laughing and shrieking. Childermass washes his face and hands in the basin on windowsill. The torches flicker in the grounds, buffeted back and forth by the wind. By all rights they should have blown out, and magic no doubt has something to do with their resilience.

Childermass fetches his notes from his bag and settles down to read them with his feet kicked up on the desk, but the words swim in front of him. There’s too much noise – excited voices, the scrape of moving furniture, an exhilaration that whistles through the house and heats the walls. Every time he drags his mind away from Elizabeth and _Antony and Cleopatra,_ his thoughts only land on Honeyfoot's offer.

A permanent place at Starecross. If Segundus no longer minds him being here, if he has decided to set the past aside, then Childermass cannot think of the proposal lightly. The last three months have been a constant, gnawing worry, a growing pull towards Yorkshire, towards Segundus. Childermass can hide his own feelings well enough, and if he is here he will know that Segundus is safe and well.

Even if…even if…

Starecross feels different to the last time he was here. He had thought coming back would ease the ache settled over him, but there’s something hollow about it that makes him want to turn and leave again, perhaps go further north, deeper into the Ravenking's country. Somewhere he can lose himself for good. 

He tips his head back against the chair, groans. He needs a good night’s sleep before he can make decisions about...anything. 

Three smart raps on the door make him start, almost upsetting the candle.

“Hello?” He takes his feet off the desk. 

“Mr Childermass? Mr Segundus sent me with some papers that might be of interest to you.”

The voice is familiar, though it takes Childermass a moment to place it. “Mr Levy?”

“The same. May I come in?”

“Yes, I…” Childermass sets his notes down. He's had more than enough conversation for one evening, but he likes Levy, his simple way of speaking and the fact that, though he is usually clearly in need of a new jacket and boots, his eyes light up at the talk of magic as much as a dedicated scholar's should. Besides, he might have something useful to say. “Come in.”

Levy pushes the door open, smiling. His dark hair is still swept from riding. “I cannot stay long – I have not even started to get my costume on – but Mr Segundus said that you would like to see my findings from Nottingham?”

Childermass blinks. In the rush of everything else, he had almost forgotten. “That would be…I’ve not found much myself.”

“I only came upon it by chance, and it does not tally exactly with what happened to you and Mr Segundus – I doubt we will ever find two stories of Faerie that are exactly the same – but I had all the details from Hadley-Bright and I could not help but feel there was some connection.” Levy holds out a wad of papers. “Here.”

Childermass takes the bundle, turns it over. The writing is cramped and messy, and he squints.

“Sorry.” Levy flushes. “I have never had a good hand. Do you want me to give you the measure of it?”

Childermass nods.

“I was in Nottingham on some business, and I stopped at an inn just outside Sherwood. When asked about my trade, I told them I was a magician and the reaction was…poor. I enquired with the landlord, and he said there was a local legend from an abbey of Cistercian monks who lived in the forest until the sixteenth century, and that it had to do with unnatural magic. He held it in no credit and would not go into further details, so the next morning I went to what is left of the abbey. There is an engraving on one of the outer walls. I made a copy.”

Levy takes a paper and smooths it out. The pencil sketch is gloomy – a series of paths through very tall trees, and on the narrowest trail a figure with their back turned. Childermass frowns. Amongst the trees, on the very edge of visibility, is a face with a strange, twisted grin.

“What is this?” That it has ties to Faerie, he has no doubt, but what ties those might be…

“I found it intriguing, so I asked to see the abbey records, and found an account by one of the monks in the fourteenth century.” Levy adjusts the papers. “Apparently villagers who lived around the monastery always used small tracks through the trees to avoid bandits on the main road. Then, those who took the paths began to disappear. Children, mostly, but once a child vanished, their siblings were sure to do so too, no matter how many times they were warned. Soon, even adults were going missing, sometimes whole families. Nothing the monks said or did made any difference. The wood around the abbey got darker and darker, and terrible sounds were heard from the trees. It is said…it is said that mothers killed their children to spare them the pain of being taken by Fairies, but the children’s voices were heard in the trees all the same, and when the graves were opened…they were empty.”

The hairs on the back of Childermass’s neck prickle.

Levy clears his throat. “In the end, the monks called for aid from a magician – he is not named – who took one of the paths into the wood. He did not come back, but a few hours later some of the last people to be taken reappeared on the trails – even a child who had been dead a week before. But those who had been gone for more than a few days were not seen again.”

“Never?”

“Never. But…but piles of bones were found amongst the tree roots for weeks afterwards. The monk giving the account speculates that the villagers were being _eaten_ by Fairies.”

Levy looks up. His cheeks are red, a glint of worry in his eyes. The candle flickers.

Childermass swallows. “Did the paths to Faerie open again?”

“If they did, there is no record of it, or none that survives. The monk is adamant that the magician closed the Faerie wood to England by releasing those trapped in it. He was a solider before he took orders, and he said that no enemy could continue without food.” He shrugs. “We do not have the full record, but I could not help but think…”

“Yes.” Childermass looks again at the twisted face in the sketch. “Thank you. I'll look into this further, if I can.”

“Here.” Levy holds out the papers. “You can keep these – they are only a copy of my own notes. I do not know if it will be of any help to you now, but…”

“It will.”

Levy smiles. “I will see you at the party then.”

Childermass inclines his head – it’s too much effort to explain that he is not going – and Levy hurries away. Childermass pulls the sketch and the papers in front of him, but he cannot take any of it in. His head is with Segundus in the forest. The tree had been strong, and Segundus packed tightly into it. There was barely room to move inside, let alone kick or punch, and it had been so cold – an infective, deadening cold. If Childermass hadn’t come, if Segundus had fallen asleep…

He groans, pushes the notes aside. Levy has found an answer of some kind, Childermass is certain of it, but it has hardly eased the pit of worry in his chest. Segundus had come so close to being lost that it makes him breathless.

_Past the size of dreaming._

He must know what means to Segundus. He must hear what Elizabeth was going to say, and that means going downstairs, party or not. It would turn a lot of heads if he were to ask her to his bedroom. 

He gets to his feet and licks his finger to scrub at the riding dust on his cheeks and forehead. He takes off his waistcoat and folds up his shirtsleeves to hide the dirt and loose threads. His hair is tangled and there’s very little he can do for it, so he merely tightens the knot holding it back from his face and turns to the bed. The makeshift mask looks at him from his bag. Childermass hesitates, then picks it up.

The material is soft and fits neatly around his ears, hiding part of the faint scar on his cheek. Perhaps it is not a very good costume, but he hardly intends to be downstairs long. Find Elizabeth, finish their conversation, and get out. Then, perhaps he can concentrate on Levy's notes. He might even be able to sleep. 

The whole thing's very simple.


	12. Five of Coins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five of Coins: Lover, mistress, friend, beloved person

The hall is a whirl of bright skirts and dark suits. The younger boys have fashioned grinning theatre masks and are running around the edges of the room leaping out at passers-by. Girls are in white gloves, colourful muslins, beads and feathers. Miss Redruth is playing a slow tune on a spinet, accompanied on the fiddle by a man with dressed all in black.

There is an eeriness about the scene that pricks the underside of Childermass’s skin and draws his thoughts towards magic.

“Mr Childermass.” Hadley-Bright is wearing a long coat the colour of a deep sea, and his mask is blue. “Who are you tonight?”

Childermass shrugs.

“A mystery.” Hadley-Bright grins. “It suits you very well.”

A group of shouting boys runs past. Hadley-Bright twists to call after them and Childermass slips away, scouring the room for Elizabeth’s green dress. There’s no sign of her in the general crowd, so he pushes towards the refreshment table, where Honeyfoot is standing with a glass in his hand and a red-feathered cap perched awkwardly on his head. 

“Childermass – you decided to join us after all.” He smiles. “What do you think of it?”

“You are certainly not short on guests.”

“Yes – between the pupils and the York Society we have rather filled the place.” He looks around, frowns. “Have you seen Mr Segundus? He must say something before the dancing begins.”

“I've only come down now.”

“Ah. Well, I am sure he will be along in a minute. Will you have some wine?”

Childermass takes the glass offered to him. The liquid reflects the light, turning red to gold.

“How's Mr Segundus?” He shouldn’t ask, but he can’t help it. “When I left you were concerned about him.”

Honeyfoot hums thoughtfully. “He seems well enough – he is very busy still, but he has been enjoying teaching and he has taken up some gentle walking which the doctor says is good for him."

"No more concerns?"

"Fewer, I suppose. He is quieter than he was before the summer, but he has had a trying time of things. All of us have – though it was nearly half a year ago now, I still find it strange to pass by the church. What might have been…” He shakes his head. “In truth, I do not know what would have happened to the school if you had not found Mr Segundus when you did. We might have found it very difficult to carry on, and it would have been a very sad sort of place – for myself, at least. Mr Segundus is almost part of my own family. I would have missed him beyond words, had he not been returned to us.” He smiles, but there’s none of his usual cheer to it. “We were in such a spin with the stream and the doctor, I do not think I ever thanked you. You put yourself in no little danger to bring him out of that wood. It was a very brave thing.”

Childermass snorts. “It's not as if I had any choice about going into the forest, and from there I did what anyone would.”

“Well, I do not think I could have carried him so far. In fact, I know I could not, no matter how dire the circumstances.” He sighs. “When the doctor first told Mr Segundus how ill he was, he was determined to carry on as if nothing had changed. His cough got worse and worse until he could barely walk, but he would not accept any help, though Charles or myself were anxious to offer it. I was in the library, and I heard a noise in the hall. Mr Segundus had fallen, and I was not able to lift him by myself. I had to call for Charles and…I do not think I truly understood how bad he was until that moment. What happened - what should have happened – that was not an easy thing to bear.”

Childermass looks sideways, taking in the lines on Honeyfoot’s face. In the light, his hair – grey for as long as Childermass has known him – seems almost white.

“How are you, Mr Honeyfoot?”

Honeyfoot blinks. “Pardon?”

“Are you well?”

“Why, yes, thank you. My leg gives me a bit of pain when I have been on it all day, but I am used to that, and this place keeps me busy enough to not pay it any heed.” He smiles. “The hall has come quite a way since Mr Segundus and myself first saw it."

Childermass takes a swallow of wine. Weak, and slightly bitter.

"Though,” Honeyfoot goes on, “I think I may need to spend more time in High Petergate in the coming year - after the summer we have had, I am getting behind with some of my affairs. Mrs Honeyfoot absolutely refuses to move to the village at the moment, but it is a long journey between here and York. I am not as young as I was when this whole business started with Norrell, and I was hardly a youth then!”

Honeyfoot laughs, but there’s a quiet huff behind it, like a tired animal.

“Mr Honeyfoot-”

Honeyfoot turns quickly away. “Now, where is Mr Segundus? Everyone is getting ready to dance! I am surprised he has not sought you out – it must have been some time since you last spoke.” His forehead wrinkles. “You have not quarrelled again, have you?”

Childermass is spared from answering by the arrival of a flurry of rustling green. Elizabeth’s hair is full of winter roses, and her mask – two, great silk butterfly wings – covers everything except her mouth.

“Father! Mother wants you by the west door – she says you must say good evening to Mr and Mrs Thomas.”

Mr Honeyfoot sighs, sets down his wine glass. “My apologies, Mr Childermass – I must go and relieve my wife from the sole burden of the Thomas’s.”

He hurries away, in the chaos of people and colours.

Elizabeth laughs. “What has you looking so surprised, Mr Childermass?”

Childermass shakes his head. “I do not think I have heard your father speak a bad word of someone before now, except of myself.”

“Ah, but you have not been subjected to the Thomas’s. They are a quite astonishingly dull pair – they would be Norrellite to the core, if they had any interest in magic at all.” Elizabeth adjusts her gloves. “When did my father speak ill of you, Mr Childermass? Not recently, surely?”

“Three years ago.” He smiles, despite himself. “He threatened me with a shotgun loaded with walnuts.”

Elizabeth throws back her head and laughs. “Oh, that is something I can believe. I suppose Mr Segundus was with him, if it was three years ago – that sounds quite like the pair of them.”

“Miss Honeyfoot…” Childermass shifts, looking down at his wine. “We were interrupted in our earlier talk.”

“What? Oh!” Elizabeth claps her hands. “ _Antony and Cleopatra_? I cannot remember what I was going to say…” She frowns. “Ah, yes. ‘Past the size of dreaming’ – only that is an interesting expression from Cleopatra to Antony. They do not have a happy romance – she is too emotional, and he not enough – and she tends to insult him more than she praises him, usually in hyperbole. ‘Past the size of dreaming’ although still exaggerative, is unusually...tender is not the word, but there is something that stands out about it. It is a passage about loss, chiefly – not just loss of life, but loss of love. Loss of a person that makes the world seem brighter than it truly is.”

 _It is past the size of dreaming, like an ocean, or…or a good man._ Segundus’s thin hands clenched tight around Childermass’s shoulders, and the hum of insects in the flowers.

Elizabeth touches his arm. “Are you alright?”

He blinks. “What?”

She flushes. “Mr Childermass! You are letting me run quite wild with my plays, and at a party no less. You must not tease me by letting me think you are truly interested.”

A man with a red cloak and a large cavalier hat shoulders between them to reach for a chicken leg.

“I…” Childermass waves vaguely at the other side of the room, almost spilling his wine. “I have to go.”

He sets his glass down on the table and hurries away before Elizabeth can say anything else, moving on instinct out of the crowded hall to the nearest corridor. There are people everywhere. He swerves, keeping his head down, and tugs at the first closed door he finds. Locked. Cold snaps at his fingertips, and it clicks open.

The library is in darkness, lit only by a torch outside one of the windows, and the shadows of bookcases rise like ribs on every wall. It reminds Childermass of Hurtfew, the rare times Norrell was not at home and he lost himself in pages he was not supposed to touch.

He kicks the door shut behind him and leans against a shelf, letting his scattered thoughts knit back together. He has not had more than a few minutes to himself since he reached the hall, and his brain is hot.

Segundus might have chosen any play to remember in the forest, to keep himself awake when he was cold and exhausted, but in the garden too…

It’s not the thought that the words might mean something about him, them, that makes his heart twist. It is the thought that they might not.

Not anymore.

What did he expect? He’d abandoned Starecross for months, burned Segundus’s letters, let him think he did not care to return when Segundus was ill. And he’d done it again, just when everything was beginning to right itself.

His face is warm, feet restless. He moves deeper into the library, brushing his fingertips along the cases. Local history, botany, geography, magical texts, until he reaches the small fiction section. There is a copy of Shakespeare’s tragedies somewhere here – he remembers looking at it and thinking it a very good size to prop open a door in warm weather – that he will be able to read without being glared at by a shopkeeper. 

He scans the titles. Byron, Coleridge, a battered leather-bound _Robinson Crusoe,_ two copies of Miss Radcliffe’s _The Italian_ and another of _Udolpho_ , _Gulliver’s Travels_ and a section of Greek poetry. No Shakespeare. He frowns. There had been one – he’s certain he’s seen it somewhere…

Segundus’s desk, after the funeral. Childermass had other things on his mind at the time, but it had been there, amongst the abandoned papers and bills, the magic texts, the greatcoat with the button he thought Segundus would never sew back on.

It’s a big book, and Segundus is a busy man. He probably hasn’t finished it yet, and if that is the case, there is only one place it will be now. 

He opens the door to the library, listens. The corridor is quiet, punctured with the twang of Miss Redruth’s spinet. Feet drum on the hall flags – the dancing has started, and Segundus will undoubtedly have been pulled aside by one of the Honeyfoots. Probably Elizabeth. She had cried the most at the funeral.

He pushes the funeral aside before the memory can raise the hairs on the back of his neck and heads upstairs. A single torch flickers on the first floor, casting spiderweb shadows. The door to Segundus’s study is unlocked. Childermass knocks first, but there’s no answer. He takes one last look along the corridor, then turns the handle.

The room is much the same as it was four months ago, as it was in the basin. There are more papers and Segundus’s greatcoat is gone from the chair, but the furniture is in the same place and…yes. The book of Shakespeare is next to the inkpot, the pages marked here and there with scraps of paper. Childermass takes a step towards it, bringing the nearest candle to life with a word.

A shriek rings out in the room. Childermass jumps. A raven hops on the windowsill, head cocked to one side, staring at Childermass with bright, black eyes.

“Merlin!” Childermass hisses. “Be quiet!”

The raven tips his head back, cackles. Childermass makes a rude gesture, turns to the desk. The binding of the book is cracked, a page slipping loose. He flips to the front, runs a finger down the list of plays…

The door creaks. Childermass whips around.

Segundus is wearing a green jacket with gold buttons and his face is a mask of glossy black feathers, reaching out from his eyes like smoke.

He looks…startling.

Segundus freezes in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

Childermass tries to speak, but no sound comes out. He can’t tear his gaze from the mask, the way it hides the lines of Segundus’s face, the kindness of his eyes. There is something different about his lips when they’re set away from the rest of his face, something _other_.

Segundus touches his face, flushes. “My apologies, the mask is rather distracting. Some of the younger students made it for me and insisted that I wear it, but I wish I had not. Hadley-Bright has twice said that I am playing John Uskglass, and the notion is quite ridiculous.” He reaches up and lifts the mask away, leaving his hair ruffled. “What are you doing here?”

Childermass clears his throat. “Looking for a book.”

“And you did not think it necessary to ask my permission first?” Segundus shakes his head. “I am expected downstairs, but I will ask you to leave my books alone, especially if they are in my private study.” His gaze go to the volume of Shakespeare open on the desk, and his eyes narrow. “I never knew that you were such a keen reader of stories.”

“You know I’m not.”

“Then it was hardly worth the effort of breaking in, was it?”

“The door was unlocked.”

“That is not the point.” Segundus takes a step back, indicating the hallway. “Please leave.”

Childermass doesn’t move. Segundus is right – they are not getting to any sort of point. 

“Why this play?” He takes a deep breath, tips the book open – it falls, as books are wont to do, at the most-read page.

“A man may read, may be not?” 

“‘If there be, or ever were, one such, it's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff, to vie strange forms with fancy.’” Childermass looks up. “You said it in the forest, before I found you.”

“I dared not fall asleep, and I had to be occupied with something. I was not provided with reading material.” 

Segundus’s lips are thin and angry, and Childermass is suddenly very aware that he’s all-but broken into his private rooms. If he’d done so a year ago, Segundus might have laughed and teased him about the more unsavoury parts of his work for Norrell, but now…

“I’m sorry.” He closes the book. “I shouldn't have come back.”

“You were invited, were you not?”

“Not by you.”

“That is what you wanted. You wanted to act like nothing had ever happened.” Segundus squeezes his eyes shut. “Just…go.”

Childermass looks back at the desk. He must ask, and it must be now.

“In the vegetable garden, before you wanted to go back to the stream, you said the world was past the size of dreaming.”

Segundus’s eyes snap open. He looks…guilty.

“I was delirious, or enchanted, as you well know.”

“Is that all?” Childermass swallows. Every fibre inside him is on a razor-edge, and his teeth ache. “Truly?”

“What do you want me to say?” Segundus’s lip trembles and he throws the mask down on the desk. “That I care for you? You know quite well the depth of my feeling. You have known it for a year – I have _told_ you, more than once! I thought you might even have acted upon it in August, though I suppose it was a foolish hope, and now you are going through my things needing _proof_?”

Segundus’s voice cuts off as he takes a breath. Laughter filters through the floor, Miss Redruth’s spinet jolting amongst the chatter.

“I’m sorry,” Childermass says again. The words are disappointingly quiet. “I should have spoken to you in August, but I thought that it would be better if I did not.”

“Better? Better?” Segundus stamps his foot. His face is blotched red. “You told me by the stream that I was not a fool for the way I felt, and then you made me feel perfectly like one! I suppose you thought you’d never have to act on anything you said – I would not have lived until the end of the month.”

“No.” Childermass’s hands are cold, like he’s plunged them into ice. “The opposite.”

“The- what?”

“You've worked so hard for this school, and when I realised you were well, that meant…meant nothing had changed. I did not want to put you in danger.”

“Then why are you in my study, asking me about plays and dreaming and…and what I meant in the garden?”

Childermass hesitates. “It is selfish.”

Segundus groans. “Then for goodness sake be selfish, because you are driving me quite mad!”

“I had to know how much of a fool I had been.” He swallows. “When I first heard you were ill, when I saw you – it would have been unfair to say anything then, after I'd been away so long.” He fumbles for the right words, feeling Segundus's eyes on him like a knife, but they don't come. He shakes his head. “I don’t know how to say it.”

He makes a step towards the door, but Segundus puts out his arm, blocking his way. “Finish.”

“What?”

Segundus looks up. His eyes are bright. “Finish what you were going to say.”

The candle flickers. Segundus’s hand is warm against Childermass’s chest.

“When I found you in the wood I was so relieved I could have kissed you, but in the east room I thought you would…" His head is spinning but he makes himself speak. It is like pulling glass out of a cut. "I thought you might feel differently once you had time to think it over.”

“Think it over? Think _what_ over?”

“Me. This is a school. There is – there was – always a chance, that you might lose it, no matter how careful we were. I thought it would be easier if I gave you time to realise that I was not…that it may not be worth it.”

“Worth it?” Segundus closes his eyes for a moment. “But you came back.”

“Yes." He looks away. "I miss you.”

The room goes very quiet.

“I have missed you since last year. I should't have come, but you have such a smile, and I have been so afraid…”

“John-”

“No.” Childermass’s vision is blurred, but he makes to push past Segundus all the same. 

“John! Will you stop this and…and come here!”

Childermass freezes, too surprised to speak, and in a moment Segundus has put a hand on Childermass’s waist and turned him around to face him.

“What if I said that I missed you too?”

Childermass blinks. “I'd say you are a bigger fool than I am. I have not given you any reason to.”

Segundus sighs. “I was so _angry_ in August, just for a moment I wanted you to know what I had felt like. I thought it would be easy once you were gone, after you had made it clear…but you are not an easy many to forget.” He looks up. “You realise that you would be taking a risk, too?”

“Not the same one.”

“It is the same one. You might end up in prison, or…or worse, just the same as me. That is the way of things, no matter how careful we are – and we must be very, very careful. Would you take that risk on yourself, because of me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then." Segundus steps back, dropping his hand. "It seems to me that if you are not happy, and I am not happy, and we have spent a year being unhappy without each other – a year in which I have died, I would like to point out – it might be more sensible if we stopped worrying about worth and risk and…and started again.”

On the windowsill, Merlin croaks. Childermass’s heart pounds like an ocean in his chest, and then he nods, and the weight of a hundred years drops from him.

He steps forward and gently reaches his arms around Segundus's back to pull him close. Childermass has not been so near to anyone in a long time, and his hands shake. He likes the feel of Segundus’s ribs against his, the warmth from the top of his head, his hands. He likes it far too much.

“Do you know why I like _Antony and Cleopatra_?” Segundus murmurs. His hair is soft and smells of candle smoke. 

Childermass looks down. Segundus is smiling, and he forgets to breathe.

“I like it because the players are such _idiots_ that it made me feel better about the way we have behaved.”

Laughter bubbles in Childermass's throat so quickly that it escapes before he can stop it. “That is not very romantic.”

“I have never pretended to be romantic.” Segundus puts his hands around the back of Childermass’s head and tugs at his hair.

“What are you doing?”

“You are still wearing your mask, and I would like to see your face.”

“I am…” Childermass blinks. “You have let me stand here, and-”

“I was paying too much attention to what you were saying to worry about the way you look.” The knot comes loose and Segundus puts the mask onto the desk. “If it is any consolation, you are very much the part for a masquerade.”

Childermass’s cheeks heat and then, before he can think himself out of it – there has been too much of that lately – he leans down and pecks Segundus on the lips. Segundus lifts on his toes to meet him, misjudges the distance and bumps his nose into Childermass’s eye.

“Ow.”  

Segundus pulls back, catches sight of Childermass, and bursts out laughing.

Childermass rubs his eye. “It is nice to know I can be a source of entertainment.”

“Oh, I am sorry.” Segundus covers his mouth, but it does nothing to hide his smile. “It is just…your face.”

“You're right. You are a poor romantic.”

“Do not be like that. You are quite noble, I promise, and not all like a cat that has been startled.” He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind Childermass’s ear. “Though you do look rather tired.”

Childermass opens his mouth to protest, but the words slip from him as he thinks of how far he has travelled in the past three months, how little he has slept, and how close he had come to losing Segundus in the dark forest, in the cold ground of the graveyard. His knees sag.

Segundus pulls him gently towards the door. Childermass blinks, and the next moment they’re in Segundus’s bedroom, and Segundus has lit the nearest candle.

“Sit down.”

Childermass sits on the bed. The mattress dips underneath him, and he pitches back on the covers with a groan. The curtains shift as Segundus clambers next to him and lies on his side, tucking his head into Childermass’s shoulder. His nose is cold. “There. How is that?”

“I think I have had a headache for a year, not realised it.” Childermass hesitates. “The door?”

Segundus whispers. A lock clicks.

“You’ve been practicing.”

“When I can. I am not yet as skilled as I would like. Mr Hadley-Bright is going to teach me his spell for keeping a flame alight in the wind.”

“Should I be jealous?”

Segundus laughs. His chest presses against Childermass’s arm as he breathes.

“When you asked me to leave in August, I thought you had finally given up on me,” Childermass murmurs. “Then you spoke to me so normally when arrived, I was almost certain of it.”

“Oh, be quiet, you absolute…you are the worst idiot I have ever seen.” Segundus sighs. “When Mr Honeyfoot told me he had sent you an invitation and received no reply, I was afraid that something had happened to you. The basin told me you were in England, I could not make it show me your face, or exactly where you were. When I saw you in the hall, I was so relieved that I had to speak to you, and there were too many people around for me to…for us to be honest.”

Childermass clears his throat. “I used the basin on you, when I was away. I kept dreaming that you were back in Faerie, and needed to know that you were not.”

Segundus tuts. “That is not very gentlemanly. Though, I might have done the same, if I had been able to.” He sighs. “It is another reason why you are better here, than at the other side of England. There will be no need for such nonsense.”

Childermass shuffles closer to Segundus on the bed. “You are certain about this?” he murmurs. 

"I wish you would stop asking that. You already know the answer."  

“After everything I've done?”

"Yes." Segundus shifts, pressing his chin gently into Childermass's shoulder. “Though, I would rather you did not do any of it again.”

“I won’t.”

“You had better not. I am not that patient.”

“You are a good man.”

“So are you, though you seem to insist on trying to prove otherwise.” Segundus sighs. “I knew that you did not feel any differently. The blood magic proved that.”

“Hm?”

“The page you left under my door, from the monk in Lincoln.”

“You gave it to Honeyfoot.”

“I read it to him. I left out the written note, but then he insisted on looking over it himself. Thankfully, I do not think he fully understood.” Segundus reaches out and plucks at Childermass's collar. “ _Beware if someone you love._ You did not cut yourself by the stream?”

“No.”

“Good.”

The candlelight shifts, turning the air orange. The sound of dancing blows from upstairs with the draughts that Starecross never seems to be rid of, bringing a humming chatter to the quiet room. One of the buttons from Segundus's jacket digs into Childermass's arm. 

“We must try and understand that magic,” Childermass mutters. His eyes slip closed for a moment and he rouses himself with a shiver. “Levy’s findings…”

“Shh.” Segundus drapes his arm over Childermass’s waist, squeezes. “You are tired, and we can talk about it in the morning. We will have much to discuss.”

Childermass closes his eyes without really meaning to. He has a brief sensation of his thoughts drifting outwards, and then Segundus’s voice, hazy against his ear.

“I must go back down, or someone will come looking for me.”

Childermass groans. He’s warm, and his legs still ache from riding.

“Stay here. I will make your excuses.”

The bed creaks, and the light changes.

“Do you want to know why I like _Antony and Cleopatra_?” Segundus says, so quietly that Childermass almost doesn’t hear. “In the other plays, young people fall in love for good or for evil. They are always starting out. But Antony and Cleopatra have been in love for years. That…that is past the size of my dreaming, that we should still be here, ten years after we first met at Hurtfew. When you worked for Norrell, I could hardly look at you without getting angry, but then...you made it so that I could not think of you without smiling, despite your stubbornness and glaring and your leaning all over the furniture. Even because of it. That is what I meant in the garden, though I hardly remember – I would not have died without letting you know.”

The mattress dips, and the air cools. Childermass sighs.

“Go back to sleep,” Segundus murmurs, pressing his lips briefly to his temple.

The candle goes out. The door creaks, but Childermass is asleep before it clicks shut.


	13. L’Étoile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L’Étoile: Hope, bright future, new life.

When he wakes, Childermass is instantly aware that he is somewhere he shouldn’t be. He’s slept in more places than he can count over the past year, but this bed is most definitely not meant for him. It smells of cotton and thick paper and something familiar, something…

He sits up sharply, smacking his elbow on the bedpost. His mouth is dry from sleep but there is a faint lightness in his chest and stomach, like a growing fire.

The bed smells of John Segundus.

Someone has taken off his boots and pulled the sheets over him in the night, but the other side of the bed is cold and the room empty. Segundus must have slept elsewhere, maybe in the east room. That is sensible, if disappointing. The shutters are open, dawn creeping over the horizon. The previous night’s conversation twists around Childermass’s thoughts like ivy, a blur of quiet words and the soft press of Segundus’s chest against his arm.

He tugs on his boots, stifling the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Whether Segundus is here or not, it will do no good to be caught near his room, and certainly not with a smile on his face.

Childermass glances around to make sure he hasn’t left anything behind, then goes to the door and presses his ear to it. The corridor is quiet. He twists the handle, darts into the empty hallway and hurries down the stairs, into the main hall where no-one will question seeing him. The dance looks like it went on late - the flags are littered with broken sprigs of holly, pieces of ribbon and and hollow-eyed masks. A discarded glove hangs forlornly over the refreshment table. Childermass walks quickly past it towards the parlour. 

There are voices in the kitchen, raised but friendly. A pan clatters, and Childermass finds himself smiling again. He has missed this place, and the people in it.

He pushes the door open. Hannah crouches next to the fire, stirring a pot of oats. Charles is carving bacon at the table. A maid rushes past with a bucket of coal, nods as he steps aside for her.

“Mr Childermass!” Charles puts down the knife, wipes his greasy hands on his apron. “Are you feeling better this morning?”

Childermass blinks. What excuses had Segundus come up with last night? “I…yes. Fine.”

“Sit down. You must be tired.” Hannah leaves her porridge and pulls up a chair, all-but pushing him into it. “Some said you’d had too much to drink, but I told Charles, you were exhausted when you got here.”

Childermass is not much delighted with the picture being painted for him, but he supposes Segundus had to give some reason as to why hadn’t come down again. “I'm quite refreshed.”

Hannah snorts. “I’ll be the judge of that. You look like you haven’t been eating properly.”

Childermass opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it. Arguing with Hannah is like picking a fight with a bull, and she’s not wrong. He hasn’t had much appetite of late.

Hannah takes his silence for assent and sets a large bowl of porridge with a jar of honey at his elbow. “Eat.”

He eats. The porridge is good, and it warms him. When he finishes, Charles gives him a thick rasher of bacon between two pieces of bread.

Childermass pushes it away.

“You’ll eat that bacon,” Hannah says, already sorting through the egg basket with threatening efficiency. “You had nothing yesterday evening.”

Childermass stands, stretches. “I can't ride on a full stomach. Keep it for my dinner.”

Hannah narrows her eyes. “Where are you going?”

“I have a mind to see York.”

“You are not thinking of taking the road today?”

“Why? Has it snowed?”

Hannah’s cheeks go pink. “You know quite well that it has not.”

“Well, then.” Childermass smiles. “Don't worry about me. Brewer won’t let me fall, even if I am asleep on his back.”

Hannah opens her mouth, no doubt to tell Childermass exactly what she thinks of his being asleep in the saddle, but Childermass has already gathered his coat and hat and stepped out of the door. Hannah’s breath leaves her in a huff, and she shouts after him to be careful.

The air is soft and clean, frost glinting in the sunlight. Childermass pulls on his greatcoat and pushes his hat down low on his head. He should have brought his scarf – Segundus’s scarf – but it is in the east room, probably with Segundus. A few hours ago, the idea of Segundus going through Childermass’s things and finding it there would have made him want to sink into the ground. Now, he smiles. Segundus is as much a fool as he is, to give his last words to a scruffy Yorkshireman who has never learned to hold his tongue.

Brewer stamps when the stable door creaks open, snuffling for food. Childermass gives him a handful of oats from the barrel, scratches his ears. Brewer tosses his head. He has a distinctly mocking look on his long face.

“It’s none of your business.”

Brewer bumps Childermass’s elbow with his nose. Childermass fetches the saddle and adjusts the billet straps, then hauls himself up. If the skies stay fair, he’ll be back just after noon.

He urges Brewer forwards, into the winter sun.

 

*

 

The weather holds, and Childermass returns to Starecross just after midday with a brown paper parcel under his arm and his face rubbed red with the fresh air. The ride has left him humming with energy, his knees and elbows pleasantly sore. The grounds are quiet, though there are a handful of people wandering the paths or sitting where they can. Hadley-Bright is perched on the wall that runs near the road, head in his hands, looking distinctly grey.

“Enjoy your evening?” Childermass calls from Brewer, making no effort to lower his voice.

Hadley-Bright groans.

“I said, did you enjoy your evening?”

“I heard you.” Hadley-Bright flaps a hand. “Go away.”

Childermass smirks, dismounts Brewer and leads him to the stable.

The kitchen door, when he reaches it, is ajar, and he hesitates outside, more out of habit than any real need to eavesdrop.

“I do not think he was wise, Mr Segundus.” Charles’s voice is quiet, disapproving. “Perhaps it is not my place to say, but if he was too ill to come down last night-”

“He was not all that ill – just tired, I think. He had ridden a long way.”

Childermass puts his eye to the crack in the door. Charles is rubbing a cloth over a piece of silver. Segundus is at the table, a cup of something hot between his hands.

“Still,” Charles says, “he should not have gone to York today. I might have thought he was delirious, except he was so much his stubborn self.”

“Stubborn?” Childermass opens the door and steps into the kitchen. “Is that any way to speak about a guest?”

Charles goes bright red, stammers.

“Yes, stubborn,” Segundus cuts in. He pulls his cup closer, blows on the steam. “One of Starecross’s most stubborn guests.”

Charles gapes. Childermass shrugs off his coat and puts it on the nearest peg, then sits at the table and pulls out his pipe. He is not a lord, and it will do Charles good to remember it.

“Are you feeling better then, Mr Childermass?” Segundus sips at his tea, though his eyes are too bright.

Childermass lights his pipe with a match – the tobacco never burns right if he does it with magic – and stretches his legs out in front of him. “Yes, thank you, so the pair of you can stop clucking.”        

Charles mutters something about the wood pile and steps outside. Segundus’s eyes follow Childermass’s pipe smoke, tracing the patterns it makes in the air.

“John-”

The door creaks. Segundus snaps his mouth shut as Hannah bustles through from the garden with a bucket. She sees Childermass, tuts, and vanishes into the pantry, returning a moment later with bacon and bread, neatly wrapped in cloth. She steps pointedly over Childermass’s outstretched feet and sets the cloth on the table. “No smoking in my kitchen. It spoils the taste of the food.”

Childermass rolls his eyes, pushes the tip of his finger into the pipe to extinguish it. “I have something to show Mr Segundus anyway.” He gets to his feet and goes to his coat to dig the paper parcel out of it.

Segundus’s eyes light up. “Did you find something of interest in the city? A book?”

Trust Segundus, to think of magic above all else. “No, but you'll like it. Are you busy?”           

"Not particularly.” Segundus puts his cup down. “We do not yet have many guests out of bed.”

Childermass tucks the parcel under his arm, picks up the bacon and waves it significantly at Hannah as he passes by her.

“You just make sure you eat it!” she calls after him. “I won’t have you getting caught up in your magic and falling over before dinner’s served!”

The door clicks shut behind them. Childermass lets out a breath. “Did you have to tell them I was ill?”

“It seemed best to stay close to the truth.” 

The main hallway has been swept, the refreshment table tidied away. Masks, gloves and other bits of costumes are piled on the windowsill, waiting to be claimed. 

“You didn't stay last night," Childermass murmurs as they head towards the staircase. 

“I did not think it wise, with so many people in the house. We might have explained you being in my room alone if you were caught, but not both of us.” Segundus’s voice is so quiet that Childermass has to lean down to hear him as they go up the steps. “Besides, I was not able to get to bed until the early morning, and I did not want to wake you. You looked like you needed the rest.”

“I did,” Childermass confesses, pushing his arms out from his shoulders to stretch them. “I don’t think I have slept in a year.”

“And it has been a very long year.”

Childermass resists the urge to put his hand on Segundus's arm - they’re still in an open space, no matter how empty it is.

“Are you…how have you been, since August?” he murmurs.

“Well enough." Segundus shrugs. "I find that I am no longer at ease in small, dark spaces, though I suppose that is to be expected, and I tire more easily. Overall, I am better than I could have hoped for.”    

Childermass frowns - Segundus isn't meeting his eye.

“What else?" 

Segundus bites his lip as they reach the top of the stairs, looks down the row of closed doors in the upper corridor. “Not here.”

He motions to his study. They slip inside and the lock clicks behind them. Papers stir in the draught, then settle. Merlin untucks his head from his wing, croaks sleepily from the windowsill, and goes back to sleep.

Childermass puts the parcel and his bacon on the nearest shelf and leans against the door, folding his arms. “What’s bothering you? Are you going to tell me you’ve had second thoughts?”

He keeps his tone light, but Segundus turns away. His heart sinks.

“It is…” Segundus goes to the desk and picks up the ink pot, straightening it next to the pile of papers. “I was very ill earlier in the year.”

Fear strikes Childermass like lightning, jolting him down to his boots. “You're ill again?”

“No, no. I am alright. Only, I did not get well of my own accord in the summer, and there is always a chance that it might happen again. I am careful, but I have been thinking about last night, and…I did not want you to be under any false impressions.”

“What impressions?” Childermass steps forward from the door. 

“I cannot promise to always be here.” Segundus’s voice cracks. “And I cannot promise that it will be because we fall out, or grow apart or…anything like that. It may be because I have no choice.”

Childermass’s stomach clenches, but he swallows the instinctive panic. They cannot tell the future - even his cards are an imprecise art, giving clear messages that mean obscure things, twisting signs and hiding true meanings. 

“John.” He steps to the desk and pulls Segundus around to face him. “It might never happen. Maybe _I_ will get ill - maybe I will take a fall from Brewer.”

Segundus shivers. “Don’t.”

“I will try not to, of course.” He puts his hand on Segundus’s shoulder, rubs a gentle circle. “But you are not selling me short because you were ill. You aren't letting me or anyone else down, so long as you are sensible.”

“I am sensible. Most of the time.” Segundus leans into Childermass and rests his forehead on his collarbone. “I am worried about Mr Honeyfoot. I have not been at my full strength and he has had to take on more than he should. I think he is finding it difficult to manage.”

Childermass thinks of the pinched look he’d caught on Honeyfoot’s face last night, sighs. “He wouldn’t want you to do more than you're able. He cares about you." 

“I know. He is a good man, and my friend." Segundus shakes his head. "That is why he should not have to do more than his share. He has a family, and a house in York to look after. It is not fair.”

“Then I will help, if I can. Or you can bring in a person to do so. Would Mrs Lennox would object to you hiring someone?”

“I do not think so. She is very generous.”

“Well, then.” Childermass dips and kisses the top of Segundus's head. “We could write to her now.”

“No. Let us talk about something else.” Segundus pulls back and scrubs a hand across his face, hiding his eyes for a moment. “I am being silly.”

“You said last night we had a lot to talk about, and you’re right.”

“Not all of it, though. Not now.” Segundus smiles. “Believe it or not, I am quite madly happy. It is like I have drunk a bottle of wine in one go, and it has yet to take effect – I keep expecting to get dizzy and fall over.”

“Then you'd better sit down.” Childermass hooks the chair forward with his foot and gestures to it.

Segundus rolls his eyes, sits. Feet pass in the corridor and a snatch of murmured conversation worms under the door. They fall silent, waiting for it to pass. 

“Now,” Segundus says once the hall has gone quiet again, “show me this magic book you have come across in York. You have the luck of the devil for finding these things.”

Childermass fetches the package from the shelf and holds it out. “It is not a book. It’s for you.”

Segundus takes the parcel, frowning. “For Yule?” 

“If you like.” Childermass perches edge of the desk in front of Segundus. “I wanted a ride and…open it. You'll see.”

Segundus picks the string from the parcel, unfolds the paper with a crackle. A deep red scarf falls onto his lap.

“Oh.” Segundus picks it up. “It is…I do not usually wear bright colours, but…” He glances up. “I think you will remember that I said that before.”

“I didn’t agree with you.”

Segundus smiles. It is not, Childermass realises, the smile on his mouth that makes Childermass want to reach out and touch him, but the way his eyes light his face like a spark catching on kindling. 

“You know," Segundus says, "I am in sore need of a scarf in this weather, especially to keep the doctor and Mr Honeyfoot happy – the one I bought last year has gone missing.”

Childermass shifts, and Segundus gives him a sharp look.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Childermass says, too quickly.

“I thought it had been lost when Mr Honeyfoot started sorting through my things after the funeral, but he insisted he had not got as far as my wardrobe. I suppose…you have been looking after it?”

Childermass grins. “You can have it back, if you like.”

“No. I like this one better.” Segundus bundles the scarf around his neck. "There. Now the doctor cannot possibly complain that I am taking any risk with the cold weather."

"I don't think he meant you had to wear it inside." 

"One can never tell with Dr Harris. And there is Mr Honeyfoot and Charles, too. They keep a close eye on me." Segundus leans back in the chair, puts his hands in his lap. “Now, what else have you been doing this last three months, apart from stealing my clothes? Have you made progress with the Book?”

Childermass’s smile falters. "Not as much as I should. I've been...distracted." He sighs. “I have done research when I travelled, and made copies of the marks, but…I've found it difficult, these past three months.” _The past year._ “Difficult to do, and difficult to stick to.”

“That is not like you.”

“No.” Childermass hums. “It is not.”

The truth of what Segundus says makes him itch. He has never let things get in the way of magic before - that is why Norrell hired him. The last time he let a person interfere with his work, it had ended with Henry Lascelles taking a knife to his face.

He has thought more than once since how Lascelles may have saved his life by driving him out when he did. It is a strange feeling, like stubbing a toe and finding that it doesn't hurt. 

“It does not matter," Segundus says quietly. "There is time. You might have made more progress than you realise, once you have time to look at it again.”

“Perhaps.” He is not certain how truthful Segundus is being, but it comforts him. “Have you been in mischief since August?”

“Mischief?” Segundus laughs. “I have spent more time in this study than anything else – I never thought that running a school would require writing so many letters! – and I have been walking a little.”

“That is not very much.” 

Segundus folds his arms over his chest. “I will have you know that I visited York twice.”

“Twice! A true reveller.”

“And I wanted to go to Nottingham after Mr Levy wrote to me. I was curious about the engraving he found, but Mr Honeyfoot said the journey might be too much.”

Childermass's skin twitches at the thought of the sly face in the trees and the hunched figure drawn along the path towards it. “Did you see Levy’s sketch?”

“Yes.” Segundus bites his lip. “I did not like it. It made me feel odd. I think that was how I knew that I could not fall asleep in the wood. It was like having someone on my shoulder, staring, though there was nothing with me in the tree.” He rubs his elbow. “Do you think I might have ended like Mr Levy’s story suggests?”

Childermass shrugs. There was no mention of water in Levy's notes, but it is not impossible. 

“All they found of those poor people was their bones.” Segundus pulls his arms closer into his body. “It makes me sick just thinking about it.”

Childermass nods. Segundus is not alone in that feeling. 

Perhaps Segundus catches some of what he's thinking, because he puts his hand on Childermass’s knee and squeezes. “I was already dead. I suppose we must be grateful, in a way.

“No.” Childermass fits his hand over Segundus’s, tracing the lines of his knuckles where they’ve been cracked by the winter weather. “To luck, perhaps. Not to that place.”

“Well, it is gone now - we have had no more trouble since the summer.”

“It'd better stay that way. If something tries to take you again, I shall have rude things to say to it.”

Segundus snorts, tightening his grip on Childermass's knee. “I have missed you. This place is not the same when you're gone - ever since Strange and Norrell disappeared, I knew I wanted you here.”

Childermass frowns. “What do you mean?”

"It is not easy to explain." Segundus shrugs. “England changed the day Hurtfew vanished. It was full of magic, but empty at the same time. When I saw you – you, and your magic – I realised how well it fitted. I had never had a chance to consider it before, because I was so angry about the school, but when you came with me to the kitchen…the first time I saw Starecross I knew it should be a place of learning, and you seemed to make it more so.” Segundus shrugs. “Perhaps it was a foolish notion, but it had been quite a trying day.”

"I suppose the feeling did not change once the trying day was over?"

"No." Segundus's mouth twitches. "If anything, it has got even worse. You have a way of drawing attention in a room that is quite wonderful. When you are not being infuriating, of course."   

Childermass snorts. “At least I am not boring.”

"I do not think anyone could accuse you of that. Most people seem rather dull next to you, including myself." 

“You are not dull." Childermass leans forward, pressing his boot to to the nearest chair leg. "You are a schoolmaster and a magician, and you have a smile that could melt stone.”

Segundus goes bright red. “Do not be silly.”

“I'm not. There will be ladies at your door soon enough, wanting you to teach them magic and make them happy. Men too, if they are daring.”

“I think your brain has been addled by too much riding. We should call the doctor.”

Childermass sticks out his tongue.

“Besides, even if there were such people at my…at my door, then I would not ask them to stay. Though you drive me to distraction, I have never met anyone who makes me want to smile so much, or has such remarkable views of the world.” Segundus adjusts the scarf. “Or buys me things that are red. Though, I think the colour is not as bold when it is on.”

“It's not bold at all.” Childermass leans forward, hooks his hand into the scarf, and pulls Segundus forward so he can kiss him. Segundus's lips are cracked from the winter, the tip of his nose cold. “Though it may make me bolder than would be wise, if that door were not locked.”

Segundus laughs against his lips. Childermass would gladly have continued the kiss – he has a pleasing image of Segundus on the desk, and wearing none too many clothes – but he makes himself pull away. Segundus whines.

“Wait,” Childermass murmurs. “There's something I have to do.”

Segundus sighs. “But you have been away for such a long time.”

“I know. That is why I must find Mr Honeyfoot. Last night he made me an offer to come and teach.”

“So, he did speak to you.” Segundus leans back, putting his hand over Childermass’s again. The study window lights the left side of his face, showing the pinkness of his cheeks. “I wondered if he might. He has been dropping hints all winter about having you stay more often at the hall, though I kept pretending I did not understand them.”

“I am afraid that I was rather…cold…in my response.”

Segundus rolls his eyes. “Of course you were. He will not have taken offence.”

“Perhaps, but I would rather be on good terms. You see, I am planning to spend a lot more time in York.”

Segundus tips his chin. “I should hope so.”

“Really?” Childermass raises an eyebrow. “I stay, you will have Vinculus too.”

Segundus puts on a pained, noble expression. “We must all make sacrifices. And he is not so bad, once you get used to him.”

Childermass leans back against the desk, letting the spine of the nearest book dig into his back. “He has guessed about us.”

“I thought he might have. Every time I came across him in August he started singing ‘Sally in our Alley’.” Segundus flushes. “It was not a polite version.”

“No, I imagine it was not.”

“Are you worried that he might…?”

“I don't think so – not much bothers him, and I don' think many courts that would take him as a witness, even if it did. I flatter myself he doesn't mind my company, and he likes you. If you were not master of this school, he wouldn't be able to help himself so freely to the stores.”

“I do not think access to cheese is a reliable form of blackmail,” Segundus says, but his voice is high and teasing.

Childermass cups Segundus’s face gently between his palms. Segundus's skin is warm, and there is a stray hair curled against his left cheek. “I must find Honeyfoot. I'll be back soon.”

“Perhaps I will not be here. I am a busy man, you know. A respectable, busy man.”

“Too respectable to let me kiss you again?” 

“Oh, go find him.” Segundus pulls Childermass's hands away from his face and gets to his feet. “But do not be long.”

Childermass leans down to peck him on the lips again. “I won’t.”

“John?”

"Hm?" Childermass pauses, half-turned to the door.  

“Were you awake last night, just before I left?”

“Yes. I heard what you said.” Childermass reaches out and tucks the stray strand of hair behind Segundus’s ear. “Give me time, and I will find a way to say it back.”

“How long should I give you?”

“Knowing me?” He shrugs. “Words are not my strongest point. And I will have to read the play first.”

Segundus traces his thumb over Childermass’s knuckle. “We could read it together.”       

“I would like that.” He kisses Segundus’s forehead. “Let me go, now.”

“I do not want to.”

“Don’t say that. I will never leave.”

Segundus smiles and Childermass feels it deep in his chest, the last loop of a knot finally undone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're nearly at the end already! Final chapter should be up sometime this week.


	14. Epilogue - Ace of Cups

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ace of Cups: Joy, contentment, faithfulness, compassion, creativity.

Segundus is already sitting up in bed when Childermass steps through the mirror that joins their rooms. Segundus's nightshirt rumpled and his eyes soft from sleep. 

“It is unnerving when you do that,” Childermass mutters, pulling off his hat and setting it on the windowsill.

Segundus looks sheepish. “I knew who it was when you reached the gate.”

“Like I said.”

“Oh, be quiet.”

“Temper.” Childermass bends down to unlace his boots, still wet from the long ride. It has been a damp September, and a fine mist of rain followed him all the way from Lancashire. “Did you miss me?”

Segundus folds his arms over his chest. “Maybe.”

“Ha!” Childermass straightens, pulls a bag out of his coat pocket and sets it down on the bed. "Brought you something.”

Segundus leans forward and lifts the cloth, revealing a clutch of wild strawberries.

“You shouldn’t have,” he says. “You know that they give me bad dreams.”

“Those are not bad dreams.”

Segundus flushes. “Wicked dreams, then.”

Childermass grins. 

“You are incorrigible.” Segundus takes a strawberry, then sets the bag on the bedside table. “Did you find what you wanted?”

“Partly.” Childermass shrugs off his coat and rolls his head to ease his neck. His shoulder aches. “A volume from an Argentine magician, but not all of it. The proprietor thinks there’ll be more further south – Birmingham, or Oxford.”

“Oxford?” Segundus sighs. “You will tire yourself out.”

Childermass limps to the bed and falls onto it, shaking the curtains. “I won’t go yet. It has been lost a long time – a week can't make much difference.”

“Good. I have missed you.” Segundus pats the space on the bed in front of him. “Sit here.”

Childermass groans. “I’m alright.”

“Your shoulder is hurting. It is all that leaning you do against walls and doorways.”

Childermass sighs, but he tugs off his shirt and shuffles up on the blankets, putting his back to Segundus’s chest. Segundus finds the tight spot where his shoulder meets his neck and rubs it gently. Childermass stretches, allows the pressure to ease out of his wrists, cramped from holding Brewer steady over rough roads in the dark. His eyes wander to the small table by the wardrobe, stacked with letters and records, and a slim copy of _The Tempest_ , open somewhere towards the end. There are things of Childermass’s too, creeping in from his own space – scraps of spells and addresses, and his notes from the King’s Letters arranged neatly for him to present at the next York Society.

Segundus's fingers find the pucker of scar tissue below Childermass’s collarbone, and he hesitates.  

“What?” Childermass looks down. The scar is the same as always - a rough star, stretched at the top where the surgeon had pulled out the pistol shot. Segundus has seen it plenty of times.

“Nothing. I was thinking of the business in London with Lady Pole.” Segundus leans forward, presses his forehead to Childermass’s back and loops his arms around his waist. “You were very lucky. I cannot imagine what would have happened if you had been killed.”

Childermass shrugs. “You might have been forgiven for feeling I’d got a just reward for stopping your school.”

“I would never think that.”

Childermass squeezes Segundus’s hands where they clasp over his stomach. “I know you wouldn’t.”

“Things might have been very different.”

Childermass’s throat tightens as he remembers that Segundus could well be in a graveyard, rather than in his bed at the hall. There are constant reminders of it – Doctor Harris asking after his health whenever they are in the village, odd glances and quiet mutterings. Segundus spent most of the freezing New Year so bundled in clothing that it was almost impossible to see him underneath it, and Mr Honeyfoot still has a way of looking at him sideways when he thinks no-one else is watching, keeping him in check.

Despite everyone’s fears, Segundus has not caught even a cold all year, but just an innocent cough can make Childermass think of things he would rather put out of his mind. Levy’s findings are still neatly arranged amongst his own papers, and he has been to Nottingham, to the abbey and the engraving, but discovered nothing further. He has found an an old account of a Fairy who used a local stream to lead away the women of a Welsh village that angered him by not gifting him shoes made from moonlight, and Segundus has come across another of a man rumoured to have eaten several hapless people in the reign of the Ravenking, but neither are particularly reliable sources. Hadley-Bright has become involved in the politics of magic and lost interest completely in the incident, and Levy has not written with anything further.

They keep looking for the answer, though, every time Childermass travels, every time a new book comes to the hall. Childermass still has dreams of blue fire, and Segundus often wakes him by sitting up in bed, clawing at the covers because he believes he’s buried underground.

If it hadn’t been for the holly bush – if Childermass had acted more quickly when the stream took him…

 _The world is so big_.

Segundus presses his lips to Childermass’s shoulder, sighs. “What are you thinking?”

Childermass hums, but he’s tired from riding and the words don’t come. He shakes his head.

“Is something worrying you?”

“No.”

Segundus doesn’t push him. He knows when Childermass needs his words coaxed out of him, and when he can be let alone.

“Here. Lie down.”

“I am not tired,” Childermass lies. It won’t be long before a maid comes to light the fires, and Childermass will have to collect his boots from the foot of the bed, step back through the mirror and pretend that he has never been here.

Segundus prods him. “You must sleep for an hour or two. At least rest flat.”

Childermass grumbles, but he lies down sideways on the bed so that his head in Segundus’s lap and his feet hanging over the edge of the mattress.

“That is no way to sleep,” Segundus says sharply. “Especially if you are travel-sore.”

“Stop fretting. I’m alright.”

Segundus huffs. Childermass smirks – he likes Segundus’s fussing. It’s well-meant, and comfortingly honest. They spend most of their time outside this room pretending, and lies are not in Segundus’s nature. Honeyfoot doesn’t often ask about his plans for the future outside the school, but Childermass knows that it hurts Segundus to keep things from him when he does. It doesn’t help that Mrs Honeyfoot demands Segundus tell her when he is going to get married every time she visits. Segundus still goes red when he makes the excuse that he is too busy. 

Nobody asks Childermass when he is getting married – no-one has since he was a boy – and Charles and Hannah seem to have settled into the assumption that he never will, so there is little to conceal from them. The only other person he spends time with is Vinculus, and there was never any hiding from him.

“Why, Reader,” he says, at least once a week, “I knocked on your bedroom door last night and nobody answered. You must have been out walking very early.”

Childermass always gives him a stern look, but Vinculus never makes his comments in company. Childermass has got used to it - when it is just the two of them on the road, it's nice not to have to be constantly on his guard.

He and Vinculus are often away, searching out books, spells and other magicians. Childermass is in London a great deal, because the further he gets with the Letters, the more politicians seem to require his presence. The journey is long and regularly difficult – they have not yet managed to perfect mirror travel for such a distance – but the government does not look to be relocating to Yorkshire anytime soon just for his convenience. At their request he has ridden to see several new Faerie roads, but most of the paths have closed by the time he reaches them. In the two cases they've remained open, he has laid what protective spells he can and put the fear of God into the people living nearby not to enter the road for any reason. The government does not like this - they want the roads explored, or closed from the inside, depending on their views - but Childermass holds firm. He has not yet got far enough with the Book to know what he might be letting himself in for if he goes into Faerie without the right protection, and he is not risking his neck to try it. Not for them. 

Despite the amount of time he seems to spend travelling, Childermass is at Starecross more often than he might once have expected. He finds it easier to study the Letters at the hall, where he has access to his books and notes and Segundus’s quiet encouragement. Vinculus’s skin only gets more complex the further progress he makes with it, spells tangling with prophecies and descriptions – Childermass is certain he has found a joke hidden on his left knee – in languages it can take weeks to translate. He has the increasing need to keep all his work in one place, and there is much to do at the school. Honeyfoot has spent more time in High Petergate with his family since spring, and Childermass finds that he is not as poor a teacher as he imagined, though he has little patience with the grownups.

There is always something to be done, an urgent task getting behind or another just beginning. Sometimes, he can’t understand how Segundus can stand to be inside for so long, dealing with it all. When it gets too much and the walls of Starecross seem to be hundreds of feet thick, Childermass will go to the moors, learning the paths and woods, the places that are magic and those that might have been. Sometimes, he takes Segundus with him. Once or twice, he has lost himself for hours at a time.

Segundus, though he has made it clear he doesn’t like this, has never questioned it.

"It is strange," he'd said, when they'd both drunk too much at the May Day celebrations and were at the very edge of Starecross’s north grounds where the grass fades into rattling heather. Segundus had peony buds in his buttonholes, but Childermass had been given a great circle of ivy that sat on his hair like a crown. “When you leave, it feels like you are more yourself than ever – at least, until you come back.”

Childermass likes coming back. He likes these mornings, where Segundus’s familiarity is all the gentler for his absence.

Merlin croaks outside the window, but neither of them stirs to let him in. He will only make a fuss until they find him scraps, and Childermass has no intention of going down to the kitchen before first light. He shifts on the bed, lets his eyes wander to the hollow of Segundus’s neck, the shadow where his collar meets his skin. Segundus’s hands drift to Childermass’s hair, tugging lazily at the knots and twists, the way he always does when he is tired.

“I do not know what you do with it,” Segundus mutters, “it is always such a mess. I suppose you will not let me take a comb to it?”

“It's called riding. And you wouldn’t dare."

"Maybe I would." 

"You wouldn't. You like my hair.” He smirks. “You like _me_.”

Segundus grins. “Most of you.” 

“Most?”

“Most is quite a lot for anyone. Especially when he has been riding for a week.”

Childermass rolls his eyes. Segundus laughs, bends and presses a kiss to his forehead.

“Come, tell me about the book. An early Argentine, or a later?”

Childermass sighs, letting the last of the knots click from his joints before they settle into conversation. The wind rattles the shutters, but he doesn’t hear it. Segundus’s body is warm against his shoulders, breathing steady as his fingers trace the lines of Childermass’s neck in the soft candlelight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that’s all - it came out a little longer than the 30k I was expecting! As I said, I never really intended to finish this story, but I’m really glad I did. I absolutely love the JSMN universe and I might come back to it when I can't ignore the pull any more! Thank you to everyone who’s stuck along for the ride or let me know that they’ve enjoyed this story – it really means a lot.
> 
> Also, Aludneva drew something to go alongside the fic, which is pretty cool: http://aludnevasart.tumblr.com/post/178791061214/illustration-for-wonderful-fanfic-past-the-size-of


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